Theme: Reform

This is the best plan that any candidate has put forward. Of course I would love to see a purely libertarian platform. But if I can’t have that (and it’s pretty certain that I cant) a classical liberal platform that allows me to protect my liberty will have to do. TOPICS 1. The Economy 2. Energy 3. The Military 4. Education 5. Immigration 6. Healthcare 7. Religious Liberty 8. Right To Bear ArmsTHE ECONOMY “Creating jobs and getting back to 4% unemployment is the most important step to a balanced budget.” – Newt Gingrich The Gingrich Jobs and Growth Plan America only works when Americans are working. Newt has a pro-growth strategy similar to the proven policies used when he was Speaker to balance the budget, pay down the debt, and create jobs. The plan includes:

1. Stop the 2013 tax increases to promote stability in the economy. Job creation improved after Congress extended tax relief for two years in December. We should make the rates permanent.
2. Make the United States the most desirable location for new business investment through a bold series of tax cuts, including: Eliminating the capital gains tax to make American entrepreneurs more competitive against those in other countries; Dramatically reducing the corporate income tax (among highest in the world) to 12.5%; Allowing for 100% expensing of new equipment to spur innovation and American manufacturing; Ending the death tax permanently.
3. Strengthen the dollar by returning to the Reagan-era monetary policies that stopped runaway inflation and reforming the Federal Reserve to promote transparency.
4. Remove obstacles to job creation imposed by destructive and ineffective regulations, programs and bureaucracies. Steps include: Repealing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which did nothing to prevent the financial crisis and is holding companies back from making new investments in the U.S; Repealing the Community Reinvestment Act, the abuse of which helped cause the financial crisis; Repealing the Dodd-Frank Law which is killing small independent banks, crippling loans to small businesses and crippling home sales; Breaking up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, moving their smaller successors off government guarantees and into the free market; Replacing the Environmental Protection Agency with an Environmental Solutions Agency that works collaboratively with local government and industry to achieve better results; and Modernizing the Food and Drug Administration to get lifesaving medicines and technologies to patients faster.
5. Implement an American energy policy that removes obstacles to responsible energy development and creates jobs in the United States.
   Balance the budget by growing the economy, controlling spending, implementing money saving reforms, and replacing destructive policies and regulatory agencies with new approaches.
6. Repeal and replace Obamacare with a pro-jobs, pro-responsibility health plan that puts doctors and patients in charge of health decisions instead of bureaucrats.
7. Fundamental reform of entitlement programs with the advice and help of the American people. Read an extended white paper on this here.

MILITARY “We need an honest national dialogue and a determination to be candid about our opponents, honest about the problems, and passionately committed to the survival of America as a free country.” – Newt Gingrich Keeping Americans safe is the most important duty of government. That is why the confusion and incoherence of the Obama Administration’s response to the threats facing America is so troubling. Newt advocates sound policies to keep Americans safe based on timeless American principles. Sound policies to keep Americans safe 1. Understand our enemies and tell the truth about them. We are engaged in a long war against radical Islamism, a belief system adhered to by a small minority of Muslims but nonetheless a powerful and organized ideology within Islamic thought that is totally incompatible with the modern world. 2. Think big. America currently lacks a unified grand strategy for defeating radical Islamism. The result is that we currently view Iraq, Afghanistan, and the many other danger spots of the globe as if they are isolated, independent situations. Only a grand strategy for marginalizing, isolating, and defeating radical Islamists across the world will lead to victory. 3. Know our values. America’s foreign policy must begin by understanding who we are as a country. We are, as Ronald Reagan said, the world’s “abiding alternative to tyranny.” Therefore, America’s foreign policy must be to ensure our own survival and protect those who share our values. 4. Military force must be used judiciously and with clear, obtainable objectives understood by Congress. 5. Implement an American Energy Plan to reduce the world’s dependence on oil from dangerous and unstable countries, especially in the Middle East. 6. Secure the border to prevent terrorist organizations from sneaking agents and weapons into the United States. 7. Incentivize math and science education in America to ensure the men and women of our Armed Forces always have the most advanced and powerful weapons in the world at their disposal. ENERGY “Contrary to popular belief, America has more energy than any nation on earth. All that’s keeping us from becoming energy independent is a lack of political will to do so.” – Newt Gingrich Today’s high gas and energy prices are entirely a function of bad government policies. Newt has an American Energy Plan that would maximize energy production from all sources–oil, natural gas, wind, biofuels, nuclear, clean coal, and more–and would encourage clean energy innovation without discouraging overall energy production. Newt’s American Energy Plan:

IMMIGRATION 10 Steps to a Legal Nation America must be a nation of laws. Everyone in the United States should be here legally. America also is a land of immigrants, and our lives, economy, and history have been enriched by immigration. There has to be a robust and attractive program of legal immigration. There are major positive economic and social benefits to streamlining and simplifying our convoluted, broken visa process. At the core of being American is a thorough understanding of American exceptionalism. We are a nation not defined by place or ethnic heritage, but by the collective understanding that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is precisely these rights, freedoms and opportunities that have drawn ambitious, risk-seeking immigrants to our shores for four centuries. It is essential that every native-born American and every immigrant learn about this exceptional heritage and our exceptional history. Three Principles

SOLUTIONS

CONCLUSION If we embrace these ten steps, America will have created a truly efficient and fair system that embraces the rule of law, while acknowledging and celebrating the valuable economic, cultural and social contributions that both existing and future visitors and immigrants have to offer our country. EDUCATION The Gingrich Education Plan: The continued growth of American jobs and American prosperity in a knowledge-based, internet-connected, globally-competitive world will be determined by quality of America’s schools. If America is going to remain competitive with China and India in the 21st century, then we must commit to improving education, especially in math and science, and moving from a bureaucrat-dominated status quo to an innovative system that emphasizes accountability, transparency, and parental choice: Empower parents to pick the right school for their child. Parents had the right to choose the school that is best for their child, and should never be trapped in a failing school against their will. Institute a Pell Grant-style system for Kindergarten through 12th Grade. Per-pupil school district funding should go into each child’s backpack, and follow them to the school their parents wish to attend. Parents who home school their children should receive a tax credit or be allowed to keep the Pell Grant. Require transparency and accountability about achievement. Each state must set a rigorous standard that allows every student everywhere to master the skills they will need to be competitive, and develop a process for grading the effectiveness of every school. Implement a “no limits” charter system. All of the money allocated for student education goes directly to the school. The school manages its own staff, whereby it is exempt from laws regarding tenure, and need not unionize. The school defines its own curriculum, in line with the state standards and assessments. Students in charters are not exempt from state assessments. The schools are not exempt from reporting requirements, nor should they be. State law allows the school to “franchise” its model without limitation. That means they need not apply for a new school every time they can build a new one. If they have the demand, they must be able to serve it. The state has NO CAPS on the number of charter schools that can be approved, and the process for approving charter schools is smooth and efficient. Establish a pay for performance system. States and school governing boards should lift all existing prohibitions that prevent a principal from evaluating teachers based in part on student achievement. Welcome business talent in our communities into the classroom. Every state should open their systems up to part-time teachers so that retired physicists, neighborhood pharmacists, or local accountants could teach one or two hours a day and bring knowledge to the classroom, and business-like adult expectations to the students. And programs like Teach For America should be encouraged and not limited. Restore American history and values into the classroom. America is a learned civilization and every American, including immigrants, should learn American history and the principles of American self-government, productivity and prosperity. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1820: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Every student must learn to read and much of what they read should reinforce American civilization. Protect the rights of home-schooled children by ensuring they have the same access to taxpayer funded, extra-curricular educational opportunities as any public school student. Encourage states to think outside outdated boundaries of education. States have developed very innovative models:

Shrink the federal Department of Education and return power to states and communities. The Department’s only role will be to collect research and data, and help find new and innovative approaches to then be adopted voluntarily at the local level. HEALTH CARE Newt’s plan to save lives and save money 1. Make health insurance more affordable and portable by giving Americans the choice of a generous tax credit or the ability to deduct the value of their health insurance up to a certain amount and by allowing Americans to purchase insurance across state lines, increasing price competition in the industry. 2. Create more choices in Medicare by giving seniors the option to choose, on a voluntary basis, a more personal system in the private sector with greater options for better care. This would create price competition to lower costs. 3. Reform Medicaid by giving states more freedom and flexibility to customize their programs to suit their needs with a block-grant program similar to the successful welfare reform of 1996. With that block grant, each state can focus on providing the assistance to low-income families that they each need to buy health insurance. 4. Cover the sickest with a High Risk Pool set up by each state to cover the uninsured who have become too sick to buy health insurance. 5. Protect consumers by reinforcing laws which prohibit insurers from cancelling or charging discriminatory rate increases to those who become sick while insured. 6. Extend Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) throughout the health care system. Everyone on Medicare and Medicaid should be free to choose an HSA for their coverage. All workers should be free to choose an HSA in place of their employer coverage if they desire. 7. Reward quality care by changing the Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement models to take into account the quality of the care delivered and incentivizing beneficiaries to seek out facilities that deliver the best care at the lowest costs. 8. Reward health and wellness by giving health plans, employers, Medicare, and Medicaid more latitude to design benefits to encourage, incentivize, and reward healthy behaviors. 9. Stop health care fraud by moving from a paper-based system to an electronic one. Health care fraud accounts for as much as much as 10 percent of all health care spending, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. That’s more than $200 billion a year. Compare this to the 0.1% fraud rate in the credit card industry thanks to its high-tech information analysis systems. 10. Stop junk lawsuits that drive up the cost of medicine with medical malpractice reform. 11. Speed medical breakthroughs to patients by reforming the Food and Drug Administration. 12. Inform patients and consumers of price and quality so they can make informed choices about how to spend their money on care. Patients have the right to know this information, but finding it is virtually impossible. 13. Invest in research for health solutions that are urgent national priorities. Medical breakthroughs–ones that prevent or cure disease rather than treating its symptoms–are a critical part of the solution to long-term budget challenges. More brain science research, for example, could lead to Alzheimer’s Disease cures and treatments that could save the federal government over $20 trillion over the next forty years. With these Patient Power reforms, healthcare can be transformed from an anchor on our economy to an engine. From a broken, fragmented system to a coordinated, innovative system that delivers more choices at lower cost for all Americans. This comprehensive approach—cost, quality, competition, and coverage—can solve the problem of the uninsured with no individual mandate and no employer mandate. Everyone would be able to obtain essential health care and coverage when needed. For those who are too poor to buy health insurance, states will have more flexibility to provide them with the assistance they need to buy it. For those who nevertheless choose not to purchase coverage and then become too sick to do so, high risk pools will provide access to coverage. Once you have health insurance, you are assured you can keep it. By contrast, even Obamacare for all its trillions in taxes, spending, new entitlements, and new bureaucracy still does not achieve universal coverage. THE RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS The right to bear arms is a political right designed to safeguard freedom so that no government can take away from you the rights which God has given you. – Newt Gingrich, NRA’s Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum We live in a time when international organizations and our own federal government are devoting significant efforts to eliminate the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. We must forcefully echo the Declaration of Independence and insist that the first duty of government is to provide for our safety. At the core of this is the Constitutional right of the people to provide for their own safety. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY The revolutionary idea contained in the Declaration of Independence is that certain fundamental human rights, including the right to life, are gifts from God and cannot be given nor taken away by government. Yet, secular radicals are trying to remove “our Creator” – the source of our rights – from public life. Newt has an aggressive strategy to defend life and religious liberty in America. Principles to protect life and religious liberty Nominate conservative judges who are committed to upholding Constitutional limited government and understand that the role of the judges is to interpret the law, not legislate from the bench. Combat judicial activism by utilizing checks on judicial power Constitutionally available to the elected branches of government. (Read an extended white paper on restoring the proper role of the judicial branch here.) End taxpayer subsidies for abortion by repealing Obamacare, defunding Planned Parenthood, and reinstating the “Mexico City Policy” which banned funding to organizations that promote and/or perform abortions overseas. Protect religious expression in the public square such as crosses, crèches and menorahs. Protect healthcare workers right to conscience by making sure they are not forced to participate in or refer procedures such as abortion. Protect the rights of home-schooled children by ensuring they have the same access to taxpayer funded, extra-curricular educational opportunities as any public school student. Protect the rights of teachers to use historical examples involving religion in their classroom. Nor should they be discouraged from answering questions about religion or discussing it objectively in the classroom. Protect the frail, infirm and the elderly from the state’s arbitrary decision to terminate life.

On Hillsdale Natural Law Review, Tyler O’Neil suggests that many conservatives aren’t libertarians despite using the term. Because Kinsella posted about it being a bit sloppy, I thought I’d use it as an excuse to try and write something definitive. THE LIBERTARIAN SPECTRUM“Libertarian Party” vs “Libertarian philosophy” vs “libertarian movement” vs “libertarian sentiments”A) “Libertarian Party” : The name of a political party that makes use of Libertarian philosophy in its policy platform. B) Uppercase “L”-Libertarian = Libertarian in the narrow sense: The self identifying name “Libertarian” has been appropriated by members of a the majority faction of the broader group of libertarians and requires total observance of the twin concepts of Property Rights and the Non Aggression Principle. This of necessity places a Libertarian as an advocate of either minimal state, private government, or anarcho-capitalist forms of creating a social order. And it specifically excludes Classical Liberals and Neo-classical Liberals for whom enforcement of norms is a necessary and beneficial defense of political shareholder property rights. C) Lowercase “l”-libertarian: Libertarian in the broader sense: A movement consisting of multiple factions, employing a rationally articulated set of arguments, each of which include or exclude certain secondary properties in addition to the twin concepts of property rights and the non-aggression principle. Those additional properties consist of a)the scope of property, and b)the scope of the ethics of exchange, and c) the scope of institutions necessary to establish those property definitions, those normative ethics, as well as d) to provide a means for the resolution of disputes. D) “libertarian sentiments” (Or “libertarian-like” affiliations): A general, abstract, sentimental preference in which political decisions err on the side of individual property rights, small government, and individual responsibility for making the best of one’s lot in life. In colloquial language, ‘libertarian’ is a self-identifying synonym for anyone who uses anti-statist arguments which may include social, religious or martial conservatives. One can possess “libertarian sentiments” and not be either cognizant of, able to articulate, or self identify as an ideological “libertarian”. Classical liberals and neo-classical liberals possess ‘libertarian’ sentiments. They do not possess a fully articulated philosophical framework. In technical terms the libertarian sentiments are used by that category of people with conservative classical liberal ideologies who have integrated libertarian commercial ideas into their conceptual framework as a means of combating encroaching statism and bureaucracy, but who have no material knowledge of libertarian philosophy, nor would they apply the libertarian constraints upon their ideology if they could articulate it. Therefore “conservatives” possess libertarian sentiments, but do not subscribe to the social implications of “libertarian” philosophy. This is because ‘conservative classical liberals’ believe an entire suite of norms to be a form of ‘property’: an asset in which they are shareholders that is depreciated by a failure to observe and adhere to those norms. And political failure to enforce those norms constitutes an involuntary transfer of assets from them to others. THE TWO TRADITIONS Two dominant traditions divide the “libertarian” movement roughly reflecting B and C above: 1) The Anarchic tradition specifically articulated by Rothbard in The Libertarian Manifesto, as well as the Ethics of Liberty. In contemporary parlance, “Libertarian” means unlimited adherence to Rothbard’s Manifesto’s single principle of non-aggression. 2) The Classical Liberal and “Hayekian” tradition. Hayek adopted the term “Libertarian” because the term “Liberal” had been appropriated by the left. Hayek sought to maintain and expand the classical liberal tradition under then name “Libertarian”. The classical liberals hold libertarian sentiments but are not libertarians. The current big-‘L’ Libertarian movement has so successfully dominated the political discourse that the neo classical liberals are only now beginning to form an ideology. Unfortunately, they have failed to understand Rothbard and Hoppe’s ethics well enough to articulate Neo Classical Liberalism in Propertarian terms. (A problem I am slowly trying to correct.) In no small part, the two libertarian traditions reflect the religious and social strategies of the authors from each tradition, with the Christian authors maintaining the concept of a collective ‘corporation’ in which all citizens are shareholders, VS the Jewish diasporic religious and social strategy of creating a ‘kingdom of heaven’ independent of the norms and institutions necessary for land-holding. It is this difference between the martial landholding Christians and the diasporic capital holding Jews that gives each branch of the movement its preferences. And it is the inability of the two movements to find a compromise position that precludes current ‘libertarians’ from forming a sufficient political block with which to alter the political discourse by incorporating classical liberal, social, religious and martial conservatives who have unalterable landholding sentiments without which ‘community’ and ‘norms’ are impossible to conceive of. I. MANDATORY PROPERTIES OF LIBERTARIANISM: 1) Non-Aggression Principle (A negative which is often stated in its positive form: Voluntarism, meaning all exchanges of property are voluntary). 2) The institution of Private Property initiated by “homesteading”: acting to transform something not property into property, over which one has a monopoly of control. 3) By implication: All human rights can be reduced to property rights.   No human rights can exist where they cannot be expressed as property rights. It is an impossibility due to scarcity and incalculability under complexity. II. VARIABLE INDIVIDUAL PROPERTIES (Limited to common properties)1) symmetrical-knowledge ethics (classical liberals and christian authors), VS asymmetrical-knowledge ethics (anarchists and jewish authors) Rothbard and Block are asymmetrical advocates. Most classical liberals lack the knowledge of Rothbardian/Hoppian ethics necessary to articulate their values in Propertarian terms. However, the classical liberals as well as the Hayekians, both advocate symmetrical-knowledge ethics whether they articulate the ideas effectively or not. “in any exchange the seller has an ethical obligation to mitigate fraud from the asymmetry of knowledge” 2) Implied Warranty (classical liberal and Christian authors), VS expressly denied warranty (Anarchist and Jewish authors). Rothbard and Block deny warranty. Classical liberals imply warranty. Implied warranty is a derivation of 1, above. “in any exchange the seller must warrant his goods and services to prevent fraud by asymmetry of information.” 3) Prohibition against all involuntary external transfers (classical liberal and Christian authors), VS prohibition only against state involuntary transfers (anarchist and Jewish authors). “No exchange, action or inaction may cause involuntary transfers from others”. III. VARIABLE INSTITUTIONAL PROPERTIES1) Shareholder Property Forms (classical liberal and Christian authors) VS Prohibition on Shareholder Property Forms (anarchists and Jewish authors). Whether intentional or not, Rothbard all but places a ban on organizations with geographic monopolies on rule making. Block expressly advocates geographic rule making, although he only expresses it in individual rather than organizational terms. 2) Norms as Arbitrary VS Norms as Shareholder Property. Since norms require restraints from action (forgone opportunities), and property itself is a norm paid for by restraints from action (forgone opportunities), then all those who adhere to norms, ‘pay’ for them. Therefore norms within a geography are a form of shareholder property, and violations of norms are involuntary transfers (thefts) from norm-holders to norm-destroyers. 3) Preferred Institution: Classical Liberal State, Minimal State, Private Government or Anarchic “Religion”. 4) “Markets Evolved” and regulation is a form of theft VS “Markets Were Made” and regulations by shareholders or their representatives are an expression of property rights. In practical terms, this is a derivation of principles 1, 2 and 3 above, since regulation is an attempt to solve the problem of involuntary transfers, fraud due to asymmetry of information, and fraud due to external involuntary transfers. 5) Artificial Property VS No Artificial Property (Intellectual Property VS no intellectual property. ) In practical terms, this is a derivation of 8 above, since if markets were made their owners have a property right to create artificial forms of property – (because different portfolios of property types are artificial norms that vary from group to group.) IV FURTHER DIFFERENCES Beyond the points listed above, “libertarian” becomes arbitrary and loses its distinction from “Classical Liberalism” and “neo Classical Liberalism”, since any discussion of the state, government, or shareholder returns on shareholder investments is alien to big-L Libertarianism because they believe that it violates their concept of the non-aggression principle. (I argue otherwise but that’s a longer topic.) Hayek, Popper and Parsons all failed to develop an articulated ethical language capable of expressing the logic of classical liberal sentiments in a rational ethics. Rothbard did it. Hoppe nearly finished it. No one on the conservative bench has so far seen to adopt it, and the classical liberal and conservative movements are trapped in Kirkian moralistic reasoning. Which is useless against encroaching statism. (Hence why I’ve formed the Propertarian Institute.) V CONSERVATIVES IN PERSPECTIVE The term “Conservative” describes a reaction to the status quo. As does progressive. In the USA, the status quo is what remains of American classical liberalism. So conservatives are American Classical Liberals who cannot use the term, because ‘liberal’ has been appropriated by the left. They are classical liberals, who DO have libertarian sentiments, but are not Libertarians because they disagree with the Libertarian prohibition on shareholder-community, and denial of norms as property. That is a “propertarian” analysis of the political spectrum. The fact that propertarian reasoning allows us to differentiate by concept of property rights rather than institutional ‘beliefs’ is just one illustration of the explanatory power of propertarian ethics. Thanks Curt Doolittle