Libertarian Rants

Lebanon was a free market haven packed with business mavericks, a bustling economy, one would call it a little piece of Europe in the Middle East. Life was good. Until one day a dark stirring brought about by the malignant influence of Syria and the PLO triggered a horrible civil war. Maybe I’m biased since I grew up in Brasil (where the world’s largest Lebanese community resides) hearing about the attempted ethnic cleansing of Christians from Lebanese and Syrian villages. But history confirms my bias.The dark hand of Syria, a nation ruled by a mafia in every sense of the word attempted to claim Lebanon as its protectorate and intervened in ways that brought about widespread human rights abuse and torture. Syria’s socialistic corrupt government cast a dark shadow over Lebanon spreading bloodshed and destruction wherever it went, although today it likes to claim it ended the civil war there. Many of the Lebanese, (some who did not even consider themselves to be Arabs), had to flee their homeland leaving behind one of the most beautiful pieces of Mediterranean real estate. 

Mel said he belongs to a church that although it is “Catholic” it does not accept the teachings of the Church after the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, or Vatican II as it’s usually called. What has the Catholic Church preached since Vatican II that it didn’t preach before? Among other things, respect for Jews and the Jewish faith, respect for people of all colors and creeds, apologies for its genocidal behavior in the Americas and Polynesia and apologies for its role in the Holocaust, Inquisition, Progroms, etc. So yeah, Mel Gibson hates Jews, his religion permits it, the Catholic Church however calls it a sin.

I want to go on one of those late night talkshows ( I don’t hyphenate, it makes English look more Germanic) and perform the following experiment: show each of the fingers on my hand one at a time. Because you know what will happen right? They’ll fuzz out the middlefinger! It’s absurd! And what about the beeps?!?! Are the christian lunatics so afraid that their kids will hear a curseword? Here’s a little advice jackasses, don’t let your kids watch latenight TV! The middlefinger is just a finger! How hypocritical are these idiots that they think a man’s chest is ok to expose but not a woman’s? A chest is a breast, how is a woman’s any more offensive? Why is America afraid of a nipple!?!?! Janet Jackson should not have appologized, she should have said: grow up you sniveling children and get over my beautiful brown nipple! Censorship is not freedom, it’s not liberty and it’s not right.

Small and mid-sized businesses flourish wherever gay marriage is legalized. I know this because I’ve lived in British Columbia and MA where gay marriage is legal. It’s good money for florists, for photographers, it’s good for limo-rental agencies, graphic and fashion designers, hotels, b&bs, inns, etc. It’s even good for churches! The right’s argument that gay marriage has a negative effect on straight marriages is downright idiotic. I’m married to a woman, and have been for the past 3 years, gay marriage has not affected us at all. Neither positively or negatively, it’s irrelevant to our private lives as a heterosexual couple. It does affect however unemployment, taxes, state revenue, etc. America’s religious right wants to throw gays in jail for marrying. That’s insane but mostly it’s just stupid. I had a work colleague who had a dream. Her dream was to be a professional wedding photographer. She was slowly building her business one weekend at a time, shooting a wedding here, shooting a wedding there. Making her dream come true by word of mouth and through her website. Then one day, MA decides to legalize gay marriage, and voila! My co-worker is suddenly swamped with requests, quits her day job, hires an assistant and now is living the American dream. She’s rich!!!! She created 2 jobs all by herself, her own and her assistant’s! Once again common sense beats superstition, now if we could only export common sense to every state… So next time you hear a candidate yacking about how he wants to create jobs, tell him this: legalize gay marriage and stop raising our taxes!

Elections are coming up and I have to trot down to DC to vote, since voting is compulsory in my country of origin. Which by the way is a ridiculous law and should be abolished. Our current president is a horrible farce, a common crook disguised as a union leader whose party stole more public money since our independence than any other administration. The last president that decided to put himself above the law like that was swiftly impeached, this one however is protected by screeching mob of socialists who believe he is some kind of messiah. Why is that all over the world countries are coming to their senses and ditching their socialist policies and South America is slowly creeping backwards in time? The population of nations that have liberalised their economies have found tremendous wealth. My fellow countrymen tend to think that is never fair to compare a South American country to an European one, but we have one shining example of liberalisation and dynamic capitalism in our continent: Chile. Further north we find another jewel of common sense, a capitalist flower in a swamp of socialism: Costa Rica. In order parts of the world Singapore, Taiwan, Ireland, Luxemburg, and Iceland all stick out as success stories. Socialists are always yacking about how much better life is in Cuba as opposed to other parts of the Caribbean, obviously this is a bold-face lie like most socialist arguments. Nations like the Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago all managed to shake their old Socialist Labour parties and get on with growing and prospering. It’s funny that people on the left would defend Cuba so ardently, its the only Caribbean nation where a woman can be thrown in jail for kissing another woman in public. Enough about our so-called treacherous friends on the left’s fringe, people interested in sacrifice and immolation are better off dead anyway. Hopefully Lula will lose, his party will suffer terrible damage, and the entire “movement” will be shown for what it is: an antiquated and immoral idea that belongs to the past.

Yup, the farmers lobby congress for subsidies, which they get. There are 5 agricultural products that receive 80% of US farm subsidies. Brazilian ethanol makes 8.3 times the energy it takes to produce, US ethanol only makes back 1.3 times the energy it takes to produce. But since corn is one of those subsidized products, Brazilian ethanol faces a huge tarriff coming into the US. Why? Corn farmers, the purveyors of famine and pollution in our world. Out of the 18,000 gas stations in the US, only 750 have ethanol because of this nonsense. Farmers are guilty of this in Europe also, they’re the reason African produce can’t come into Europe and compete, always begging for massive handouts from the government and protective tarrifs. Meanwhile Africa’s farmers go bankrupt and are forced to watch their crops go to rot. Why are there even farmers in the first world? Why are their businesess not allowed to fail like other businneses? They are incompetent, they can’t compete without sucking tax-payer money away, and they make it impossible for the developing world to develop. Agribusinnes, family farmers, local farmers, whatever, they are a stumbling block to free trade and are succesfully destroying the lower half of this planet. If I make 1000 q-tips and only sell 9, the government doesn’t pay me for the other 991, how can we have this double standard with farmers? I shouldn’t even have to pay for produce considering how much my taxes go to pay for it already!