California in an Oyster Shell

Most people in the rest of the country know that the state of California is a strange place. Unless you live here, however, you can’t fully appreciate just how dysfunctional it has become.

A case in point is what is happening to Coast Seafoods Company, the state’s largest shellfish producer. The company has been operating an oyster farm in Humboldt Bay for the past 65 years. However, the company may cease operation because the California Coastal Commission in June voted 6-5 to deny permits for both the company’s existing 230 acres of shellfish farming as well as a proposed 265-acre expansion. Coast Seafoods has 80 employees and an annual payroll of $2 million. Doubling its capacity is a microcosm of what economic growth means and how it happens.

The commissioners who voted to deny the permit renewal and expansion asserted that the company “had not adequately addressed potential impacts to ecologically significant eelgrass beds in the bay.” Humboldt Bay covers a total of 17,000 acres. The disputed area, therefore, comprises less than three percent of the bay.

California has made the accomplishment of virtually any economic activity incredibly costly in both time and money. Coast Seafood’s project, for example, has to be approved by the Humboldt Bay Harbor District, the California Coastal Commission, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, the California Fish and Game Commission, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Even if all those agencies approved the project there would still be obstacles. Three environmental groups, Audubon California, Earth Justice, and California Waterfowl Association, have filed a lawsuit alleging that the oyster farm expansion would “irreparably harm eelgrass in the bay.”

In its attempt to expand its oyster beds Coast Seafoods has so far spent over $2 million for environmental studies. Although the company initially wanted approval to farm 500 acres, it has reduced its request several times in attempts to meet the long list of concerns and demands by the various agencies.

Jack Crider is the harbor district’s executive director. His agency voted unanimously to approve the oyster farm’s renewal and expansion. He said, “By the time we butcher the hell out of this, we’ll be lucky to have 100 acres, maybe 70 or 80 acres, divided up six different ways.… If you were in the oyster industry, would you consider investing in Humboldt Bay after this? It’s just a big trigger to say it’s going to be too expensive and difficult to get a permit. They’ll go to Oregon, they’ll go to Washington, they’ll go somewhere else. They won’t go to California.”

If Coast Seafoods ceases operation, it will not be the first oyster farm to succumb to out of control regulations in California. Two hundred miles south of Humboldt Bay is Drakes Bay. The oyster farm there, in operation since the 1930s, was forced by the U.S. Park Service to suspend operations in 2014. The dispute had raged for over ten years and was considered to be one of the ugliest environmental disputes ever. Fighting the forced closure were Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, renowned California cuisine creator Alice Waters, and Food Democracy Now. Even California leftists are powerless against the march of the inexorable agencies.

In her letter to the Park Service Feinstein wrote, “The Park Service has falsified and misinterpreted data, hidden science and even promoted employees who knew about the falsehoods all in an effort to advance a predetermined outcome against the oyster farm. It is my belief that the case against Drakes Bay Oyster Company is deceptive and potentially fraudulent.” Same old same old.

California stacks regulatory agency on regulatory agency. Permission for most projects requires approval from all layers. The result is that every agency has what amounts to veto power over any project. The agencies are populated by self-important board members who see themselves as vital guardians of the planet. Wildlife is assumed to have infinite value for which any minute risk or uncertainty is deemed to be unthinkable. Anything else, human well-being, for example, is assumed to have zero value.

Furthermore, each agency has tunnel vision. They aren’t allowed or motivated to consider anything outside their narrow focus. Nothing else can be considered, no compromises are allowed. Private property rights are given absolutely no consideration. They can do nothing beyond enforcing the rules they’re hired to enforce. This is not the way we should be making resource-allocation choices.

The agencies in no way bear the costs of the decisions they impose on the people and companies they regulate. When their rulings put a company out of business, it’s not their problem. Their job security is untouched.

There is absurd duplication and redundancy throughout the bureaucracies. The Coast Seafoods project must receive “water quality certifications” from the Army Corps of Engineers as well as the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. (Ironically, oysters filter water.)

The regulatory agencies and their environmentalist co-conspirators are expert goal post movers. Their favorite ploy is to add to the already long list of “threatened” species. For example, in the oyster farm issue a new concern is for the black brant goose. Supposedly a three percent reduction in Humboldt Bay eelgrass will constitute an existential threat for the geese in their annual migrations.

Eelgrass, black brant geese, marbled murrelets (a shore bird that nests in old-growth forests) have all been granted victim status and they will not be the last. The supposed at-risk species used to execute the Drakes Bay oyster farm was the harbor seal. Agencies don’t mind taking sides in imagined conflicts between species, e.g. eelgrass vs. oysters, seals vs. oysters, spotted owls vs. barred owls, whatever works.

An article of faith among environmentalists is that every ecology is a fragile, delicate system. Each ecology’s current state is perfect and the tiniest change will set in motion forces too terrible to contemplate. To describe the agencies as “risk averse” is far too tame a description. Negativity overwhelms positivity.

Besides having to cope with all the agencies, California grants incredible power and authority to every imaginable self-appointed protector of the “environment.” A traditional legal doctrine is that to sue someone you must demonstrate “damages” and “standing.” Environmental groups are given wide latitude in making such claims. Everyone is granted “stake-holder” status. In addition, “not in my backyard” resisters successfully stop or at least delay project after project.

In any economy, there are wealth creators and wealth preventers. In California, the wealth preventers hold the upper hand. Because the obstructionists have been so successful in the past at consolidating their power, there are few checks and balances left in the state. The state is politically and philosophically uniform and predictable. Diverse it is not.

The wealth preventers, i.e. environmental groups, trail lawyers, and Democrat politicians, hold the reins of power in California. They are all system wonks and are experts at gaming the system. They feign concern for spotted owls, delta smelt, and eelgrass.

In actuality, logging opponents couldn’t care less about spotted owls. Their real objective is to stop all logging or at least make logging so costly and such a hassle that it’s greatly reduced. If there were a population explosion of spotted owls it would have absolutely no impact on their opposition to logging.

The oyster company’s maddening regulatory mine field is the rule in California and there are only rare exceptions. California’s insanity has gotten so over the top even some liberals can’t ignore it. After the legislature and Governor Brown recently extended its asinine “cap and trade” policy for an additional ten years, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Joe Mathews wrote, “Can our system for controlling greenhouse gases be adopted around the world? Or is California pursuing a lonely one-state war on climate change that will land us in a bubble of economy-destroying regulations?… At its worst California is a bubble of distinctive and convoluted regulations and laws, which are hard to unwind, especially in a state with so many lawyers.”

California is like a petri dish for unbridled Democrat control. It’s the canary in the economic coal mine. The state is demonstrating to the rest of the country what’s in store if Democrats start winning elections. It’s what would have been in store for the whole country if Hillary Clinton had won in November. President Trump has made rolling back regulations one of his foremost priorities.

That California’s economy manages to function as well as it does in spite of the barriers placed in front of it is a tribute to the persistence, energy, and creativity of its wealth creators. California has such immense beauty, natural resources, and human resources the fact that they are being so squandered and wasted is a crime. The difference between what could be accomplished in the state and what is accomplished is incalculable.

“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘What might have been.’” — John Greenleaf Whittier

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◼ California in an Oyster Shell July 27, 2017

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Democrats and Republicans Are Not Morally Equivalent

The recent attempted mass assassination of Republican congressmen and its aftermath reveals much about differences between Democrats and Republicans. It’s a difference that Democrats are doing their best to pretend does not exist.

One of the ways Democrats are attempting to escape any responsibility for the shooter’s motives is by using one of their favorite and most insidious subterfuges — “moral equivalence.” Democrats are doing their level best to convince everyone that Democrats and Republicans are equally responsible for the poisonous atmosphere currently rampant in our culture.

The event ought to be an enormous indictment of the Democrat party and the left. There is what should be an obvious and blatant difference between the two parties.

It simply would not occur to a Republican to make a Democrat president symbolically an assassinated Julius Caesar, as they have been doing with their Shakespeare in the Park presentation in New York City this spring. We simply don’t think that way. There isn’t that much hate in our hearts. Any haters in the Republican Party are outliers. The haters on the left are mainstream.

Democrats are doing their best to gloss over and minimize the shooter’s political affiliations and the similarity of his attitudes and opinions with those of the Democrat party. The shooter’s beliefs were carbon copies of those of Democrat politicians. Democrats want us to believe that fact is irrelevant. Is it irrelevant that he specifically targeted Republican politicians? When in history has any shooter ever targeted Democrat politicians specifically because of their party affiliation? The attitude of Democrats reminds me of what George W. Bush said about al Qaeda, “They don’t oppose our policies, they oppose our existence.”

Following the shooting, the clueless FBI pretended not to know what the shooter’s motives were. As John McEnroe would say, “You can’t be serious!” Were they trying to be funny? Does the FBI not realize how ridiculous they sound? Has political correctness fried their brains? As they might say in the red states, “Don’t pee in my face and tell me it’s raining.”

There’s a whole lot of denial going on. They have sown the wind, but they deny responsibility for the whirlwind.

“Moral equivalence” is one of the left’s personality disorders. It is, for example, why liberals are uncomfortable with the idea of “American exceptionalism.” They would like us to believe that no one country is better than another or that no one religion is better than another. It is why they hold Israel and Palestine equally responsible for the murder and terrorism in that region.

The left does not want to take sides in any conflict. They do not like facing the existence of evil. Their inability to face that reality is part of their utopian mindset. They’re typically more sympathetic with the killer than the victim, more sympathetic with the law breakers than the law enforcers.

For Democrats, any incident involving guns is a terrible thing to waste. Whenever guns are involved, they exploit it for all it’s worth. Their tiresome obsession with that issue demonstrates their empty bag of issues. Democrats have no new issues or ideas. They have no young leadership. The party is worn out intellectually and demographically.

Democrats actually believe that an abortion is something positive. Unrestricted abortion is the political issue they are most passionate about. They believe that an abortion is as desirable, or even more desirable, than a live birth. The cold heartedness with which they view the issue is chilling.

Liberals know for certain that Donald Trump is a racist and bigot. How do they know that? Because he wants to protect our borders and enforce existing immigration laws. In order to categorize Trump as a hater they have to redefine and corrupt the meaning of hate. In their minds wanting to secure the borders and enforce existing immigration laws means he has hatred in his heart.

Another example occurred during the 2008 campaign against “Prop 8” in California. That proposition was about adding to the state’s constitution the following, “Only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The most frequently seen bumper sticker seen at the time was “8 is Hate.” In other words, Democrats in California believed that you had to be a bigot to in favor of keeping the definition of marriage what it has been for hundreds of thousands of years. Prop 8 passed but was subsequently voided by the courts.

The good news for Republicans is that the Democrats’ worn out bag of tricks and duplicity aren’t working like they used to. There’s a huge difference between how the two parties behave and how they see the world, and most of the country agrees with the Republican version, at least as evidenced by the November and other recent elections.

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◼ Democrats and Republicans Are Not Morally Equivalent June 30, 2017

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

The Media’s Ominous Ambitions

The media have decided that reporting the news is no longer sufficient for them. They’ve decided they want to participate rather than just observe and report the passing scene. For example, they have taken upon themselves the negating of the results of the 2016 presidential election. They’ve arrogantly concluded they’re entitled to greater responsibilities and influence.




















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◼ The Media’s Ominous Ambitions June 1, 2017

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

A Reminder to Conservative Trump Critics

Conservative elites as well as some in the Republican establishment love finding fault with virtually everything Donald Trump says or does. There is almost a daily litany of what they know he should have done differently or not at all. They can always find something wrong with whatever he does.

Here’s the problem — like everything else in life, Donald Trump is a package deal. It simply is not possible to design your own idealized Donald Trump (or anyone else). Furthermore, he’s the president. They’re not. He actually ran for president, got nominated, and got elected. Pointing out what he could have said or done better is nothing more than pointless and tiresome kibitzing.

For example, Jonah Goldberg, a devout never-Trumper, had a recent column entitled “The Right Can’t Defend Trump’s Behavior.” The sub-heading stated, “President Trump’s defenders struggle to explain his unorthodox behavior.” Goldberg doesn’t seem to grasp that if it were not for Donald Trump’s “unorthodox behavior” Hillary Clinton would now be president. Unorthodoxy was what it took to overcome the standard brutal tactics of the establishment.

Life comes in packages, not discrete components. You can’t put in an à la carte order for life. You can’t mix and match, pick and choose your preferred combination of reality parts.

Conservatives who are offended by Trump’s style, personality, and tweets are akin to the campus snowflakes who need “safe zones” and “trigger warnings.” They are a bit too delicate and precious for the discomforts of reality. It’s time, however, for them to put their big-boy pants on and grow up.

Another inescapable reality is that life is comprised of choices. If you are a conservative who doesn’t like Trump, what are your alternative, real-world choices?

In debates, Milton Friedman would sometimes ask his opponent, “What perfect solution on what perfect planet are you comparing this to?” That is an excellent rhetorical question. It’s a good way to bring someone back to reality.

The political realities of 2016 meant voters had a choice between one of two candidates — Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. If the Republican nominee had been anyone other than Trump, conservatives would now be living with the hell-on-earth presidency of Hillary Clinton.

None of the other Republican primary candidates would have had a prayer against Clinton and her henchmen in the media. They would have been demonized, villainized, and defeated, just as John McCain and Mitt Romney were eight and four years ago. Trump was the only candidate capable of surviving the whatever-it-takes tactics of the Democrats and the media. He won, because he refused to play by the establishment’s ground rules and threw their obnoxious politically correct censorship right back in their faces.

Trump is a bare-knuckled brawler who never gives an inch. His counterpunches are fast, hard, and relentless. Like it or not, that’s what it takes to survive and win in today’s political environment.

Whenever you find yourself bothered by something President Trump says or does, repeat these three words to yourself: “President Hillary Clinton.” You’re bound to feel better instantly.

Spend a little time visualizing what a Hillary presidency would be like. It’s not hard. Her advisers would include Huma Weiner, John Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Elizabeth Warren, and Madeleine Albright, just to name a few. It would be a four- or eight-year prolonging of the Obama presidency. You would have been forced to refer to Bill Clinton as the “first gentleman.” If all of that turns your stomach, you should be thanking President Trump every day for keeping it from becoming a reality.

Too many of the conservative elites use Trump’s imperfections as opportunities to feel sanctimonious and holier than thou. They seem to think we’re in the faculty lounge, rather than fighting against people who are serious about destroying everything we hold dear.

Dennis Prager recently wrote that America is now engaged in Civil War II. He’s right. Conservatives who find President Trump too coarse for their delicate sensitivities don’t seem to recognize the gravity of what’s at stake. This is not the time to go wobbly.

It’s been said that a liberal is someone who will not take his own side in a fight. It’s starting to look like that could be said of some conservatives. Politicians like John McCain and Lindsey Graham criticize fellow Republicans far more often and energetically than they do Democrats. With friends like these, who needs enemies? In many ways, McCain’s and Graham’s behavior is more repugnant than someone like Sen. Chuck Schumer. At least Schumer is open about being a Democrat.

Undermining your leader, particularly for unserious reasons, is equivalent to working for the enemy. Conservatives have few friends in high places, certainly not the establishment, the media, academia, or the bureaucracy. We cannot afford to have enemies within.

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◼ A Reminder to Conservative Trump Critics February 20, 2017,

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Losing Power Has Left the Democrat Party Dazed and Confused

The Democrats know they are in trouble, but they probably don’t know just how deep the trouble is. At the national level the party is now further out of power than it’s been since 1928. This lack of power and control is a problem in and of itself, but it is an even larger problem for what it portends for the party’s future. The party’s problems are deep and systemic and there are no clear remedies.

For the first time in over three generations the Republican Party controls the U.S. Senate, the Congress, and the White House. In all probability, there will soon be a conservative, not liberal, Supreme Court. Not only is there a vacancy on the Supreme Court that Donald Trump can fill, there are 104 vacant federal judgeships waiting for his nominations when he takes office. The judiciary has been the left’s go-to option when they fail to achieve their objectives legislatively. This change in the nature of the judiciary could last for decades.

Lack of power has profound implications for Democrats. Power is the Party’s raison d’être and sine qua non. Without power the party is broke and broken.

Consider, for example, one crucial element of their reliance on “identity politics,” specifically, organized labor. Organized labor is perhaps the single most important and dependable factor in the Democratic Party’s long-term success. In fact, Britain’s equivalent of the Democrat Party is called the Labour Party.

Democrats rely on a perverse variation of voluntary exchange. In exchange for votes, campaign contributions, and election workers, Democrats deliver legislation and regulations favorable to unions. The system works well for both entities, but it only works so long as Democrats have the power to keep their part of the bargain.

On the other side of the quid pro quo, there has to be a sufficient population of union members in order to generate an adequate amount of campaign funds. Unfortunately for the Democrats, the percentage of the U.S. labor force in unions has declined from 20 percent in 1983 to 11 percent now. Less than seven percent of the private workforce is unionized. Thirty-five percent of government employees are union members, but that too is in jeopardy. When President Trump fills the current Supreme Court vacancy, mandatory union dues could well be ruled unconstitutional. That could be a double whammy — reduced union membership and a reduced supply of campaign funds. Trump has said that he wants to reduce the federal workforce by 20 percent. What a glorious accomplishment that would be.

Another major contributor to the Democratic Party’s past success has been the mainstream media, i.e. the major television networks and big city newspapers. The media could not have tried any harder than it did to get Hillary Clinton elected President. They did everything in their power to convince voters that Donald Trump was a despicable racist and sexist, someone who was absolutely “unfit” to be President. It didn’t work. They can’t simply double down on their efforts in the next election because they’ve already exhausted that option.

The media tried so hard to elect Hillary their intentions became blatant and their efforts became counterproductive. They may well have increased rather than decreased Donald Trump’s popularity. Not only did their efforts backfire, the media also paid a high price in terms of credibility.

The media’s influence and power depend on credibility and trust, both of which it used to possess. Credibility and trust are fragile and fleeting commodities. Once they’re lost, it’s almost impossible to get them back.

In the years leading up to the election Hillary Clinton was able to command fees of $200,000 or more for her boring and vacuous twenty-minute speeches. Why was anyone willing to pay her so much for so little? There was a not-too-subtle assumption that once she had the power of the presidency their generosity would be rewarded. The exorbitant fees were little more than prepaid bribes.

A small but nevertheless telling detail of the recent election was the outcome in Washington, D.C. There Hillary Clinton trounced Donald Trump 94 percent to four percent. Residents of D.C. obviously know which party has their best interests at heart, and it’s not the Republicans. The Democrat Party is unquestionably the party of big government and concentrated power, but that party lost, and it lost big. Smaller government means fewer government employees and fewer public-sector union members. Maybe Bill Clinton (Hillary’s pretend husband) was only premature when he famously proclaimed, “The era of big government is over.”

This new and novel (for Democrats) distance from power will not only hurt them in the future, it will even hurt them retrospectively. Because the Democrats used their recent power so arrogantly and incompetently, much of what they’ve accomplished will soon be erased. Not only is Obamacare on the verge of annihilation, so are most of Obama’s executive orders. Obama’s legacy will be the thinnest and most transitory in presidential history.

Democrats have held power for so long they are lost without it. Their anger and frustration is almost palpable. The party is lost in the wilderness without a compass. Let’s hope they stay there for a long time. Maybe they can break the Old Testament record.

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◼ CAPITOL DESK Losing Power Has Left the Democrat Party Dazed and Confused

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Sacramento’s High-Output Law Factory

The New Year’s Day front-page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle read, “1st Day of Year Brings Hundreds of New Laws.” The exact number of new California laws taking effect on that day was 898. Unfortunately, there is nothing unusual about 2017. The corresponding number for last year was 807; in 2015 there were 930 new laws.

Every year hundreds of new laws are passed by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and dutifully signed into law by the Democrat governor. The lawmakers will soon get to work dreaming up hundreds of additional laws.

Why so many laws? Lawmakers pass laws because that’s what lawmakers do, especially in California. The state Senators and Assembly-persons have the ability to pass laws (needed or not) so they do. From their leftist perspective, the more laws, the better. If they were capable of passing 10,000 laws a year they probably would. They are essentially law hoarders. Sacramento, more than anything else, is a law factory. Liberals fervently believe that the road to paradise is paved with legislation.

It’s doubtful that any of the legislators who passed the almost 900 laws could tell you what even a hundred of them were. The laws are on the books but most of them will never be known about or enforced. That simply isn’t possible.

The lawmakers almost never kill any of their previous creations. Nor are they ever curious as to whether or not the laws achieved their goals and purposes. “Evidence? We ain’t got no stinking evidence!”

The following is a representative sample of their latest offerings:

Schools in the state are now banned from using “Redskins” as a mascot, which lawmakers said is “racially derogatory” to American Indians. (In anticipation of the new law Calaveras High School conducted an on-line poll to choose a new mascot for the school. The vote was to change the mascot to nothing.) California businesses have until March 1 to make all of their “single-user” public restrooms accessible to all genders, instead of one for women and one for men. Public and private health plans are required to cover a year’s supply of birth control, instead of requiring refills every 30 or 90 days. The lawmakers took pity on women being burdened by refilling prescriptions at unreasonable intervals. Smokers are prohibited from smoking within 250 feet of a youth sports event.

In the politicians’ eyes the citizenry is composed of perpetual Peter Pan-like children. Not to worry, however: the politicians are there to protect them. California politicians’ inflated sense of self-importance is beyond imagining.

The proliferation of laws is analogous to inflating a currency. The rampant growth of laws reduces the value and respect for laws in general as well as making effective enforcement impossible.

As the result of a November ballot initiative, California now has a statewide ban on plastic bags, such as it is. There are so many exceptions and intricacies to the law that it really isn’t a ban at all, sort of a ban in name only. The “ban” applies only to plastic bags at the check-out stand, and even that has exceptions. Plastic bags are still permitted in the produce and meat sections of stores.

If you don’t have your own reusable bag when you check out, you are charged ten cents for each paper, “biodegradable” bag. However, low-income Californians are protected from the bag fee because shoppers paying for their groceries with food stamps get their paper bags free of charge. (Because of the stigma associated with the term “food stamps,” the California version is officially called “Cal Fresh.”) Stores are allowed to keep the revenue generated by the dime penalty.

Is the ten-cent penalty sufficient to have any measurable impact? Probably not, and that’s typical of many of the asinine new laws as well as the thousands already on the books. It is as though a subconscious objective of the lawmakers is simply to annoy people. Maybe the laws are a kind of revenge on the citizenry for being so dense and uncooperative with the politicians’ grand schemes.

Ultimately Californians will have so many laws that they will no longer need to make their own decisions. California will have achieved law nirvana. Provided life in California doesn’t grind to a halt, it will be perfect.

In the meantime, for the rest of the country California is worth watching because it’s such a clear object lesson of what happens when Democrats have unconstrained political power. California is what happens when Democrat dreams come true. Obamacare resulted from a similar set of circumstances.

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◼ Sacramento’s High-Output Law Factory January 10, 2017

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.

Are Liberals Misanthropes?

On the surface liberal policies and positions don’t seem to make sense. However, they do make sense if you keep one thing in mind — liberals do not like humans or humanity. An unfair accusation? Consider the evidence.

Liberal policies make sense if their objective is to punish rather than benefit humanity. Furthermore, without recognizing this aspect of liberalism you will never make sense of it. Their policies are consistent with their basic values. Liberals can’t like humanity. It would be contrary to everything else they believe.

Much of damage liberalism does to society results from the suppression of human freedom. There are a variety of opinions about what is unique about humans, about what distinguishes them from other animals. More than anything else, the uniqueness comes from free will.

Reducing an individual’s freedom diminishes that person and makes him smaller, makes him have less of what makes us human. Without free will we cannot develop our uniqueness nor fulfill our potential. Morality can only exist in the context of free choice.

Individual freedom is a low priority for liberals. In fact, they see individual freedom as a problem, not a blessing. Liberals fear freedom. They don’t like freedom because they don’t like what people do with their freedom. If you don’t like humans and don’t approve of their behavior, you will not want them to be free. If you dislike humans, you’ll dislike liberty. In their view, humans are just no damn good.

That’s why most of liberalism involves constriction of individual freedom. Liberals love government. They advocate taking choice away from individuals and putting it in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. That is a dehumanizing process.

An axiom of conservatism is “the bigger the government, the smaller the individual.” Liberals think that’s a good thing. Liberals yearn for smaller individuals. They believe that if humans could just be prevented from making the stupid choices they all make, society would be better off.

Liberals love mass transit. They think it’s impossible to spend too much on it. They generally despise automobiles. Automobiles have done more for individual freedom than almost any other human achievement. Liberals think that automobiles are the chief culprit in global warming and the destruction of the planet. For conservatives, our endowment of fossil fuels and hydrocarbons is seen as a blessing. For liberals, it is seen as a curse.

In the view of liberals, humans are the one species that is destroying the planet. Humans deplete “non-renewable” resources and do things that emit carbon dioxide. In their view, carbon dioxide (an absolutely essential building block of all life) is a pollutant that is destroying the planet. Environmentalists have often likened humanity to a virus or plague. “Population control” targets only humans.

Why are liberals so uncaring for the unborn? Why are they such passionate defenders of “abortion rights”? Why do they care more about baby seals than they do about human fetuses?

Their enthusiastic and almost fanatical advocacy of abortion is partly the result of their desire for fewer human beings. Abortion is the issue that generates the most passion and energy for liberals. You can’t believe that killing a human fetus is something positive and admirable unless you don’t like humans. How can anyone enthusiastically support the termination of innocent life? It’s easy if you don’t like humans.

They are reflexively opposed to wealth-expanding projects such as the Keystone pipeline and fracking. If you don’t like humans you won’t care about doing them any favors. The pipeline, fracking, offshore oil drilling, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would all benefit humans and do no measurable or lasting damage to the environment. The benefit-cost ratio would be enormous, but only if you see benefits to humans as a benefit. Imaginary and grossly exaggerated environmental damage is a ruse for their real objective of denying humans comfort and happiness. Wealth is liberating. Preventing wealth creation diminishes freedom.

Dislike of humans explains why liberals love regulations. Left on their own humans will buy large sugary soft drinks, showerheads that use too much water, watch Fox News and listen to conservative talk radio. Liberals never met a regulation they didn’t like. Only those who care little about freedom can reflexively love regulations. The cost of regulations for the U.S. economy is conservatively estimated to be $1.7 trillion and growing. Excessive regulations are reducing our standard of living by at least a tenth. That enormous cost is of no concern to liberals. After all, it’s only humans who are affected.

Liberals don’t want humans to enjoy themselves. They feel guilty about living and existing, and especially about living opulently.

If they feel guilty they have convicted themselves of some wrongdoing. They seek absolution by buying Priuses and recycling. Driving a hybrid is the modern equivalent to sacrificing a goat to appease the earth gods. It’s like going to confession and a way of doing penance for too much consuming.

If you don’t like your own species, your own country, can you like yourself? It’s ironic that those who focus so much on the importance of self-esteem are the ones who do the most to make it difficult. Which comes first, self-hatred or species-hatred?

Public schools teach our children that humans are destroying habitat and the eco-system, driving millions of species to extinction, and generally destroying the planet. They essentially teach them that their parents are no damn good.

Liberals have a utopian mindset. As Mark Levin shows in his book, Ameritopia, all utopian variations throughout history have envisioned building a new kind of human. Wanting to fundamentally change human nature shows that you don’t approve of human nature as it now exists.

If you want to change something it’s because firstly, you think it needs to be done, and secondly, because you think it’s possible. An important dividing line between liberals and conservatives is the question of whether or not human nature is subject to manipulation. Liberals think it is, conservatives think it isn’t.

The fact that liberals do not like humans is why it is such a mistake to grant them so much power over our society, economy, culture, and public policies. Liberals advocate policies that constrict progress and wealth creation rather than enhance them. They want wealth prevention, not wealth creation. They are, at best, ambivalent toward economic growth which, in their view, only increases humans’ ability to destroy the planet. We are being governed by people who don’t like us.

The people who are in charge of public policy don’t really want good things to happen to humans. Humans don’t deserve good things. If it’s a policy that harms humans they’re just getting what they deserve anyway. Liberals are not that motivated to help humans. They’re “just not that into you.”

If someone is put in control of something he doesn’t like, the outcome will not be favorable to that something. Human achievement will be a fraction of its potential until liberalism is seen for what it is and how much damage it does.

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◼ Are Liberals Misanthropes? November 14, 2016

Ron Ross Ph.D. is a former economics professor and author of The Unbeatable Market. Ron resides in Arcata, California and is a founder of Premier Financial Group, a wealth management firm located in Eureka, California. He is a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma and can be reached at rossecon@gmail.com.