Libertarian politics in the United States is highlighted here in Al Jazeera America. For refinement, I asked Cato Institute chairman Bob Levy for direction. Here are Bob’s comments on the piece, and the definition of libertarianism laid out by Immanuel Wallerstein in the article.

Not a bad piece … but like many others in the media, it offers a warped view of libertarianism that tends to marginalize us.  For example:

“Libertarianism is most simply defined as a basic hostility to the government and its institutions. A full-fledged libertarian wants few (if any) state-owned enterprises, no constraints on private enterprises by government regulations, extremely low taxes, total individual freedom in the social realm, primacy of privacy rights over governmental intrusion, and the reduction of armed forces and police to a minimum.”

1.  Libertarians favor a constitutionally limited government that has strictly enumerated powers.  Within that framework, we do not have a “basic hostility to the government.”  Indeed, we have great respect for the legitimate functions of government in securing individual liberty.

2.  Libertarians do not argue for “no constraints on private enterprises by government regulations.”  We recognize that government has an important role to play in preventing and punishing force and fraud — whether perpetrated by individuals or by enterprises.  For example, we support properly-structured restrictions on pollution, penalties for securities fraud, and legal remedies for defective products.

3.  Libertarians don’t demand “total individual freedom in the social realm.”  We acknowledge that responsibility goes hand-in-hand with freedom and we do not condone behavior that infringes on the rights of non-consenting bystanders.

4.  Libertarians would not reduce “armed forces and police to a minimum.”  The proper size of the armed forces and the police is the size necessary to undertake the activities duly assigned to those agencies by our Constitution and laws arising thereunder.  The first task is to identify the appropriate functions of the police and military, and then to authorize those entities to perform those functions only — and no others.

Parisians—contemplating the outcome of past the election for mayor of Paris—can either drown their sorrows or celebrate in style over un café et un croissant, s’il vous plait. Our friend Alec Lobrano, in a recent WSJ article, explains the intricacies involved in making croissant dough (it can take 48 hours for good dough) and recommends the best Parisian bakeries for the quintessential French breakfast.

As I posted several weeks ago, Alec Lobrano has a 2^nd edition of his best-selling Hungry for Paris coming out mid April (pre order at Amazon). But perhaps what you don’t know is that April 1—April Fools Day—is not only Dick’s dad’s 99^th birthday and one of our grandson’s 11^th birthday—but also the date of release for Alec’s latest book, Hungry for France. It’s also a trifecta if you order Alec’s Hungry for Paris and Hungry for France along with David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories for a special price at Amazon. Both Alec and David are long-time ex-pats living in Paris, and we met Alec several years ago through David on one of David’s grand gastronomy/chocolate tours (davidlebovitz.com). In each of their books, Alec and David offer insightful and often amusingly irreverent insiders’ views of living and dining in France. Even if you enjoy traveling only by armchair, you’ll find hours of enjoyment with these great new books. I promise.

Bon voyage et bon appetit,

Debbie

Although NKM came up short in her gaffe-prone bid to become the first lady mayor of Paris, the rest of the news from Sunday’s second round of voting was breathtakingly ugly for Francois Hollande and his imploding Socialist party. The French people, by in large, are fed up with French politics as usual and have spoken out in historic fashion. For the radical far-right Front National (FN) to garner the support it received, a new era must be underway in the Fifth Republic of France.

Debbie and I have been in France frequently in recent years and have observed the actions of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN) first hand. This crowd is a take-no-prisoners radical and rebellious contingent hell bent on change in a big way. The FN, strongly anti-Muslim immigration and integration, would deport a broad swathe of current Muslim residents and prevent most other non-European immigrants (i.e., gypsies) from entering France. The FN is powerfully law-and-order focused and anti-European Union. After Sunday’s voting results, it is clear that a sizable percentage of French voters want to break the unworkable two-party political stranglehold and move to a multi-party system—and just the type of political revolution needed here in America.

What do Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Paul Krugman have in common? Higher taxes for you. Mr. Gates believes that when tax rates are below 50 percent there’s room for additional taxation. That’s just great.  As long as they’ve made their money, right? Rolling Stone interview:

Rolling Stone: Let’s talk about income inequality, which economist Paul Krugman and others have written a lot about. As a person who’s at the very top of the one percent, do you see this as one of the great issues of our time? 

Bill Gates: Well, now you’re getting into sort of complicated issues. In general, on taxation-type things, you’d think of me as a Democrat. That is, when tax rates are below, say, 50 percent, I believe there often is room for additional taxation. And I’ve been very upfront on the need to increase estate taxes. Particularly given the medical obligations that the state is taking on and the costs that those have over time. You can’t have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil. Yes, they have negative effects, but I’m like Krugman in that if you expect the state to do these things, they are going to cost money.

Should the state be playing a greater role in helping people at the lowest end of the income scale? Poverty today looks very different than poverty in the past. The real thing you want to look at is consumption and use that as a metric and say, “Have you been worried about having enough to eat? Do you have enough warmth, shelter? Do you think of yourself as having a place to go?” The poor are better off than they were before, even though they’re still in the bottom group in terms of income.

The way we help the poor out today [is also a problem]. You have Section 8 housing, food stamps, fuel programs, very complex medical programs. It’s all high-overhead, capricious, not well-designed. Its ability to distinguish between somebody who has family that could take care of them versus someone who’s really out on their own is not very good, either. It’s a totally gameable system – not everybody games it, but lots of people do. Why aren’t the technocrats taking the poverty programs, looking at them as a whole, and then redesigning them? Well, they are afraid that if they do, their funding is going to be cut back, so they defend the thing that is absolutely horrific. Just look at low-cost housing and the various forms, the wait lists, things like that.

When we get things right, it benefits the entire world. The world’s governments don’t copy everything we do. They see some things we do – like the way we run our postal service, or Puerto Rico – are just wrong. But they look to us for so many things. And we can do better.

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Please no! My Cato friend Gene Healy points out the problem with our political royal families in his weekly DC Examiner column:

Draft Bush! That’s the GOP establishment’s bold new scheme for 2016.

And people say they’re out of ideas.

“Many if not most” of 2012 nominee Mitt Romney’s biggest donors are courting former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the Washington Post reported Sunday; the “vast majority” would back him in a nomination fight, according to one top fundraiser. Jeb, brother and son to presidents 43 and 41, respectively, hasn’t yet made up his mind: “the decision will be based on ‘Can I do it joyfully?’”

If he can, he’s stranger than he seems, and maybe not the sort of fellow we want to trust with nuclear weapons.

Still, Jeb seemed pretty jubilant last fall, at a Philadelphia event, where he and Hillary Clinton, the odds-on favorite for the Democratic nod in 2016, “basked in a mood of bipartisan bonhomie.” Bush was there to give his potential 2016 rival the National Constitution Center’s ”Liberty Medal.” “Hillary and I come from different political parties, and we disagree about a few things,” he joked, “but we do agree on the wisdom of the American people — especially those in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina.”

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In the kitchen, our favorite fats for sautéing are butter, XVOO, duck fat, and especially coconut oil.  According to Sally Fallon and Mary Enig in Nourishing Traditions, lauric acid, found in coconut oil, is a medium-chain fatty acid with antifungal and antimicrobial properties. Read here how coconut oil perhaps is also good for your heart and offers protection from the buildup of proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease.

Part of the appeal of coconut oil, says Glen D. Lawrence, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Long Island University in Brooklyn, is that it has “medium-chain fatty acids,” a designation referring to the number of carbon atoms in the fat. Most of the fats Americans eat have long-chain fatty acids, Dr. Lawrence says.

The medium-chain fatty acids are easier to digest, particularly for people with gastrointestinal ailments, scientists say. And the body burns them quickly, which some researchers think may make them good energy for athletes.

Coconut oil’s fatty acids, including lauric acid, kill a wide range of viruses and bacteria in the laboratory, Dr. Lawrence says, but so far it’s unknown if the same thing will happen in the body after it is ingested.

Early research on coconut oil and Alzheimer’s disease shows a possible protective effect on neurons. In a study published earlier this year in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Canadian researchers found mouse brain cells treated with coconut oil were somewhat protected from the toxic effects of amyloid proteins, which build up in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients.

Coconut oil, imported primarily from the Philippines, has a “slight coconut taste and aroma” in its “virgin” form, pressed from coconuts and otherwise unprocessed, says Bruce Fife, a Colorado Springs, Colo., naturopathic doctor who has written several books on coconut oil and other coconut products. If it is refined using chemical processes, it loses its flavor, he says.

Most of the scientific research has been done on refined oil, so there’s no evidence virgin oil is better unless you prefer the taste, Dr. Fife adds. Both types are available in stores.

This sea change, along with the emergence of Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN), is the big takeaway from the French elections. A younger generation of French politicians and voters are making waves that will change the political landscape in France.

Just such a sea change is underway here in America, though older Americans and the entrenched political elite will deny it, if they even sense such a seismic shift. The Marxist policies of Barack Obama have proved a disaster for America. A quick check of America’s level of debt, the ever-running record of massive budget deficits, historically low job growth, and a sinking dollar provide the ironclad evidence. Mainline Republicans, including George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney and John Boehner, have offered little better. America’s rigid two-party political system has not served Americans well. The proof is in the pudding.

Today, America perches precariously on a cornice. Millions of American artisans, evangelical Christians, farmers, and small business owners (including Dick Young) do not want to be lumped into a Republican voting block based on starting fruitless foreign wars and ringing up monster deficits keyed to big government entitlement schemes. On the Democrat side, hard-working blue-collar workers (likely NRA members, Harley guys, and Sunday church goers) want no part of the welfare fraudists (i.e., ACORN), professorial elites, and Hollywood yahoos. In France, the Socialists just received the whupping of a lifetime, and Marine Le Pen’s radical right Front National (FN) has made gains of a historic magnitude. America, as NFL draftnicks are want to say, is “now on the clock.”

It would appear that the special interest crowd—which in recent elections financed Newt Gingrich and John McCain’s neocon-charged and failed presidential bids—are out to get Rand Paul. I expect the Senator to make it clear to Americans that he has no interest in support from the War Dogs. Rand Paul has come out repeatedly against foreign intervention. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both against foreign entanglements and clearly warned Americans against such adventurism.

As a libertarian, Rand Paul has also come out strongly against big government. George Bush, John McCain, Mitt Romney, John Boehner and other classic Republican big-government interventionists are opposed to how Rand Paul sees the world and are attempting to marginalize Paul’s views. Perhaps these gentleman need to look at the political earthquake that recently rocked the socialists’ boat in France. Big government Francois Hollande got whipped hard, while far-right Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN) made historic gains. The French people are fed up with the sorry state of two-party government, especially the type of government foisted upon them by the Hollande-led socialists.

As the entrenched politicians are about to find out, Americans, also fed up, are apt to find Rand Paul’s small government, anti-intervention strategy compelling. The Paul forces can easily overcome massive anti-Paul funding and media management by the War Dogs. Today’s Internet-based, social-media-centric era offers Rand Paul and others campaign options not previously available. Here you read all about GOP Hawks Prepare for War-Against Rand Paul.

According to several donors at the Republican Jewish Coalition conference held in Las Vegas last weekend, the billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is prepared to fund a campaign against Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) if he picks up increased support during his widely anticipated presidential run in 2016.

Several prominent GOP donors at the conference suggested that Adelson, who spent more than $100 million backing Newt Gingrich and Romney in 2012, is likely to spend vast sums against Paul if he appears to be well positioned in the Republican primaries. Adelson’s spending is largely motivated by his strong concern for Israel, and Paul’s positions may well put a target on his back.

According to TIME, one unnamed former Mitt Romney bundler said it was “scary” that Paul could win the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary.

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Let’s see: Last Tuesday in the Rose Garden, the president bragged that 7.1 million Americans have signed up for Obamacare (but how many have actually paid?). What Obama didn’t mention was that 6 million Americans have had their coverage cancelled because, for example, a 60-year-old woman did not have the pediatric dental coverage mandated by O’Care.

Here Peggy Noonan explains that the bill, which was signed four years ago and affects a sixth of the U.S. economy, is not what was passed by Congress. Parts of it have been changed or delayed 30 times by executive fiat.

The program is unique in that the bill that was signed four years ago, on March 23, 2010, is not the law, or rather program, that now exists. Parts of it have been changed or delayed 30 times. It is telling that the president rebuffed Congress when it asked to work with him on alterations, but had no qualms about doing them by executive fiat. The program today, which affects a sixth of the U.S. economy, is not what was passed by the U.S. Congress. On Wednesday Robert Gibbs, who helped elect the president in 2008 and served as his first press secretary, predicted more changes to come. He told a business group in Colorado that the employer mandate would likely be scrapped entirely. He added that the program needed an “additional layer” or “cheaper” coverage and admitted he wasn’t sure the individual mandate had been the right way to go.

Finally, the program’s supporters have gone on quite a rhetorical journey, from “This is an excellent bill, and opponents hate the needy” to “People will love it once they have it” to “We may need some changes” to “I’ve co-sponsored a bill to make needed alternations” to “This will be seen by posterity as an advance in human freedom.”

That was the president’s approach on Tuesday, when he announced the purported 7.1 million enrollees. “The debate over repealing this law is over. The Affordable Care Actis here to stay. . . . In the end, history is not kind to those who would deny Americans their basic economic security. Nobody remembers well those who stand in the way of America’s progress or our people. And that’s what the Affordable Care Act represents. As messy as it’s been sometimes, as contentious as it’s been sometimes, it is progress.”

Someone said it lacked everything but a “Mission Accomplished” banner. It was political showbiz of a particular sort, asking whether the picture given of a thing will counter the experience of the thing.

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