Vaclav Klaus hits the right notes before the European Parliament

What a follow up Vaclav Klaus is to Sarkozy! Read his speech before the EU parliament. He basically says (my liberal paraphrasing), wait a minute, I thought we in Eastern Europe already escaped from that lovely blend of socialism, one-party rule, and economic basket-case-ism. Now we're all marching right back to it under the banner of an EU central planning board!?

His argument that the positive meaning of the EU rests precisely in the taking down of artificial state borders to trade and migration and the facilitation of broader and more integrated free markets across borders is trenchant. The value does not lie in centralized regulation and state control of all economic activity. That is the path back to the exact antithesis of the value of the integration enterprise itself!

Of course, the media will promptly ignore most of what he says, at least relative to its fanboy coverage of Sarkozy and his beloved rock-star pop superstatism.

As it was, superstatist parliamentarians actually walked out during the speech at the moment Klaus was calling for tolerance of dissent and open discussion!

(HT to Tom DiLorenzo at LRC).

1% for Obama; 100% for Brother

Mr. Obama received 63mn votes, which would have been roughly similar for whatever candidate might have won. Is this a mandate?

US President is "the most important job in the world," said a Bloomberg article announcing the election result. The office surely does impact the entire world.

One problem with that is that it defies the job description utterly. I mean the original job description in the Constitution, the document that legally created the office of President. As the Founders roll over in their graves, the decisions of US Presidents impact the entire world, particularly those portions of it that, at any given time in recent history, no matter which party is in power, find US-launched or sponsored violent destruction raining down.

But how about the significance of those voting numbers? As I have been suggesting above, it all depends on your perspective. For example, the voting-age citizen population of the US is about 200mn. Therefore, about 68.5% of this group did not vote for the next US President; just 31.5% did. Indeed, only 20.6% of the entire population of the United States (305.5mn) voted for Mr. Obama. Thus, 79.4% of the US population did not, either by choice or by exclusion. Is the next President according to such a process their President? What power should he have over them, to make decisions on their behalf, to spend their resources and even lives?

And looking further afield, the global population is 6,734.9mn. This means that a scant 0.94% of people voted for the next occupant of this office.

Though I find political voting highly problematic ethically, I did vote yesterday too, in a way. The campaigning by many, many great candidates had been intense. But in the end, on economic voting day, the day of decision, the result was unanimous, as usual. What I voted for, incidentally, was a Brother HL-5280DW monochrome printer for my office.

One vote in favor; none against. 100%. As it should be.