The Free Market: Fallacies and Facts | Tom Woods.

Lew Rockwell runs one of the best, if not the best, libertarian sites out there. All the right people hate it so he must be doing something right. LOL

» Obama’s Signing Statement on NDAA: ‘I have the power to detain Americans… but I won’t’ Alex Jones’ Infowars: There’s a war on for your mind!.

WhyRonPaul.com.

A great short version of a film about Ron Paul and his 2008 campaign. If you haven’t watched it you should take the time to do so.

I found this excerpt of Rothbard’s Human Action on the mises website today. Thanks to Dr. Murphy for posting it.

So lets look at the professors argument. He starts off asserting the law is legal and then wonders wether the Supreme court will look to legal precedent or partisanship as it’s guide when adjudicating this case. Surely there are more options? What he is doing is framing the debate (or so he hopes) on his own terms. Either you see it based on the logic of precedent or you are a partisan (and obviously he is implying right wing) hack. Of course, one should be careful of legal precedent, as judges are NOT infallible (never mind that is exactly what the supreme court stated in Cooper vs. Aaron 1958).

Anyway, the argument he presents goes on to bring up the commerce clause and the fact that (in his mind) everyone purchases health care at some point as giving Congress (under the commerce clause) the right to force people to purchase health insurance. If you can’t see the problem with this logic, then I really don’t know what to say. What I want to deal with here is his use of the commerce clause and the historical innacuracy this represents.

First of all, a study of the references to commerce at the Constitutional Convention, in the Federalist, or in any of the state ratifying conventions will show you that by commerce the founders meant “trade or exchange”. Furthermore, to regulate, in the 18th Century, did not mean anything more than to make regular, or to function in an orderly manner. So the point of the clause is that it was the job of Congress to make the trade and/or exchange of goods regular. Period. Not that Congress could force someone to purchase something simply because, at some point in the past or the future they will or have entered the health care market. If this were the case, then why doesn’t the government mandate the purchase of firearms for self defense? We could play this game all day.

The rest of the professors argument falls apart and is not worthy of debate as it is based upon a historical fallacy, one which he is either ignorant of, or chooses to ignore. Either way, this article is not scholarly or intellectual, and is not even worthy of being written by someone with a Ph.D. But then again, what should I expect? It did, after all, appear in the LA Times.