L.A. Liberty

Fighting Marauders: On Earmarks

Let’s say a group of people have hired you to protect their justly acquired property.

An overpowering group of marauders saunters into town, moves in among the populace, and demands the property of the people you are protecting on the pretense of the legitimacy of democracy. Majority rule, they say. Might makes right, they exclaim. And they have the numbers and violent threats to “prove” it.

You, as is not only your hired duty but your moral obligation, fight against this theft. You try everything in your power to prevent their aggression. You also find a way, just in case you fail, to have some of that stolen money returned to your employers (either directly or by having it spent in a way that may benefit them). In a sense, you secure stolen funds to mitigate the severity of the aggression against those you have sworn to represent.

Would it logically follow, then, for someone to claim that you have colluded with the marauders? That, because of your willingness to use the marauders’ tricks against them in order to secure the return of some of the property taken from your employers, you are not really adhering to your hired duty or moral obligation?

Of course not.

So when Ron Paul places earmarks in bills that he is adamantly against, he is attempting to channel funds that will be spent anyway to best benefit those who have been fleeced in the first place. Funds that are not thus earmarked instead fall, unconstitutionally, under the authority of faceless bureaucrats who are less beholden to an electorate and thus more prone to corporatist special interest sway. In fact, earmarks increase transparency in government spending since sequestered funds must be officially put aside instead of simply dumped in some bureaucrat’s or committee’s account out of the public eye. The more that is specified by Congress, the less that can be hidden under bureaucratic decree.

(Of course, the only true solution to eliminate the corporatism and theft would be to eliminate government spending altogether. We don’t need it, anyway.)

Here’s Ron Paul on earmarks.

Now that that’s clear, can someone kindly explain the aforementioned logic to this gentleman?