By Walter E. Block
There is a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of our friends on the left. They are appalled at the advent of the Trump Administration and what he has so far accomplished even in these it is still very early days. If you have missed this very welcome phenomenon, you just have not been paying attention to politics in the last little while.
The “progressives” are not merely upset but rather incensed at the “antics” of Elon Musk. He has not been elected to anything, and yet he is upending all of their precious apple carts. He is a billionaire! (Bernie Sanders used to inveigh against “millionaires and billionaires”; since he joined the ranks of the former category he only attacks those in the latter.) Of course Mr. Musk is only implementing the policies of his boss, Donald Trump, the present president of the United States (boy oh boy, I like the sound of that), who was indeed elected to something other, I forget exactly what, it couldn’t have been all that important.
The New York Times is apoplectic that General Brown has been fired for supporting DEI (“Didn’t Earn It”). But Mr. Trump campaigned in part on the basis of eliminating that very vicious, depraved, racist program, and he is merely, unlike many politicians, keeping his promise on this matter. Hey, do we want to cure cancer, heart disease, stroke and other dread diseases or not? If so, we want the best people in the laboratories of the nation and as professors of bio-chemistry. It should matter not one whit as to the color of their skin or the type of genitalia with which they walk around. As that famous plagiarist said, people should be judged on the basis of the content of their character. Instead, medical schools have gone woke and our health care is the poorer for it.
A female pilot landed her airplane upside down in Toronto, Canada. Another crashed her helicopter into a plane in Washington D.C., killing dozens of people. Once upon a time, long long ago, in order to become a fireman (not a firefighter) you had to pass tests requiring you to carry weights similar to those of adults up and down ladders. Very few women could do so. As a result, they eased up on these requirements to appease their God, so-called affirmative action. California fires burn merrily while three members of the distaff side are in charge of putting them out. Boys don’t belong anywhere near girl’s changing rooms or sports teams. The Donald if valiantly trying to put a halt to this craziness and the left-liberals are excoriating him for that.
He had the temerity to fire some 6% of the members of the Infernal Revenue Service. The howls of outrage that ensued as a result were deafening. How could he do that? The IRS is our friend. The income tax is a voluntary payment! So what that this organization ran rampant over conservative and libertarian organizations. They are the Holy Grail.
Mr. Trump is draining the swamp. He is clearing out the Augean Stables. He is Making American Great Again, as he promised to do.
Judges, mainly appointed by Obama and Biden, are doing their best to stop him in his tracks. Our nation is predicated on the idea that there are only three branches of government. Somehow, a fourth has been aborning, and I am not referring to the press.
Instead, this Frankenstein Monster consists of a large number of regulatory agencies which are neither fish nor fowl; the alphabet agencies and laws. Civil Works Administration (CWA), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), Works Progress Administration (WPA), Apple, Banana, Carrot (ABC), Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Social Security Board (SSB), Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Federal Reserve System (FED), Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Bank Protection Act (BPA), Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), Social Security Board (SSB), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Farm Credit Administration (FCA). These are just the tip of the iceberg. I stuck in ABC to see if you were paying attention.
There are cases here of these bureaucrats being judges in their own cases, juries, policemen and legislators. They make up the rules and regulations as they go along, enforce them, adjudicate violations to them. They eat out the substance of our economy. Donald Trump is trying to poke a stick into their wheel, God bless him.
His DOGE is attempting to save the long-suffering taxpayers a bit of money. The average Joe works hard to keep his family going. Donald wants to protect him from a bunch of economic locusts and he is excoriated by the swamp dwellers of Washington DC for so doing. He had the audacity to ask a bunch of civil servants what they did last week, what did they accomplish? The horror! Who does he think he is anyway? He is butting in where he does not belong. It is simply none of Mr. Trump’s business what these “civil servants” do, or do not do. Being CEO of the country does not in the least entitle him to stick in his nose where it simply does not belong. The nerve of the man.
There are one or two things about which I disagree with the present President of the United States (that has a nice ring to it). The New York City peak load pricing system is a Godsend to keeping traffic moving in the Big Apple. Mr. Trump is trying to squelch that excellent public policy. Hey, no one is perfect. The other is tariffs. One of the reasons the US is so successful economically, despite the best efforts of the Democrats to undermine it, is that we have a gigantic free trade area. When other states try to set up a tariff against the importation of California wines, the Supreme Court puts the kibosh on that protectionist venture. On the other hand, better a tariff than bombing when dealing with a country like Colombia. And tariffs not for economic but for political reasons, to protect the country, are an entirely different matter.
Pegs:
NYTimes, General Brown https://www.google.com/search?q=NYTimes%2C+General+Brown&rlz=1C1CHBD_enUS796US796&oq=NYTimes%2C+General++Brown&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAEyCQgDECEYChigATIHCAQQIRiPAjIHCAUQIRiPAtIBCDE1MzlqMGo3qAIIsAIB8QUSw5HXzCNi4w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8; https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/us/politics/joint-chiefs-cq-brown-military.html
female air pilots involved in crashes https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0305048396000126
IRS bias against conservatives https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups
alphabet soup of regulatory agencies https://www.britannica.com/list/7-alphabet-soup-agencies-that-stuck-around
A female pilot landed her airplane upside down in Toronto, https://tribune.com.pk/story/2529824/kendal-swanson-identified-as-alleged-pilot-of-delta-flight-that-crashed-upside-down-in-toronto
A female pilot crashed her helicopter into a plane in Washington D.C. https://www.quora.com/Why-are-some-people-blaming-the-female-helicopter-pilot-who-crashed-the-US-army-helicopter-in-the-American-Airlines-plane-They-are-saying-that-she-was-a-diversity-hire
Discover more from The Libertarian Alliance
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Related posts:
Powered by YARPP.
If I am on an aircraft and the pilots are either Black or female, I shall immediately be concerned that they may not have obtained their position on merit. And if the pilot is a bloke in a skirt, I’m getting off.
You’re getting off on it? Sounds kinky.
Great article, Walter. Yes, it is fireman, not firefighter. In London we had the Grenfell Tower fire disaster a few years ago. The female chief fireman told everyone in the building to stay in their flats and wait to be rescued although the entire building was on fire. That was what her checklist told her to say. When she was relieved after a shift change, a male chief fireman took her place and immediately realised that advice was not appropriate and told everyone who could to take the staircase down to safety if possible. Female leaders will (on average) tend to just read from the checklist in front of them. Many people lost their lives because of that advice.