Maybe Zapatero’s a “self-proclaimed socialist” like Benjamin Tucker, who was also proud to call himself a “consistent Manchester man.”

Be that as it may, the Spanish people today are heroes of liberty.

A century ago, the triumph of militarism, jingoism and statism caused Sumner to write ironically of the conquest of the United States by Spain.

Today, the Spanish people could give us a lesson in what it means to be American. They are skeptical of their government’s claims, and refuse to uncritically accept the official line as it appears in the media. They refuse also to be prodded back into line by patriotic symbols and slogans.

Maybe we need to be conquered by Spain again.

Spanish voters are not sophisticated. They are as ignorant of social issues as voters everywhere. Voters have been influenced by emotion, tension, uncertainty and anger, they have not shown much intelligence. The result of the election is not a valid representation of a stable public opinion. After many years of public schooling and indoctrination, most Spanish are statist collectivists who mistrust or hate freedom. Entrepreneurial mentality is weak, many people want secure jobs in the administration.

Socialists in Spain are not swearing to curb the welfare-warfare state. They will probably maintain or reduce military spending, which is very low anyway, but they will increase the welfare state considerably. They promote social security: public education, health care, retirement, unemployment insurance. Their ideology is against property rights and entrepreneurship; they speak of the right of the people to receive subsidies and services from the state. They will let markets work only in order to be able to confiscate more wealth. Now they speak about economic responsibility and balanced budgets but they were always criticizing the PP when it insisted about having no budget deficit. Socialists systematically oppose free trade, they are against the liberalization of shopping schedules and they oppose giving licenses for new commercial malls. They will probably try not to scare foreign investors with some free market rhetoric, but they defend an increase in capital gains tax and financial analysts worldwide and recommending caution with Spain (with the conservatives we had the best possible ratings). They also talked about a flat tax rate several years ago when they proclaimed themselves “socialist libertarians” (a lovely contradiction), but the idea was rejected because it was not progressive. Socialists promote all the crazy ideas of the new collectivists, like environmental fanatism, sustainable development, the Tobin tax, etc. House prices have gone very high and the socialist solution is to create a new Housing Department. The labor department is probably going to be headed by unionist communist who strongly opposes deregulation of labor relations and freedom of contract. Thanks to the socialists we have a huge number of unnecessary public universities staffed with collectivist bureaucrats who hate free markets. Socialists get most of their votes in the poorest regions of Spain dependent on unemployment and agricultural subsidies. Socialist promises are just words, their past performance (recessions, unemployment, monetary manipulation and devaluations, and corruption) speaks strongly against them. Zapatero is the candidate of ex president González: he emerged surprisingly against a clear favorite, José Bono (a regional president who was not attached to González). The Socialists have shown once and again that they will do almost anything to stay in power.

Aznar is not a lunatic, he is trying to fight terrorism and has worked efficiently towards that goal, at least inside Spain; Zapatero is not a spokesman for sanity, he is a demagogue who promised many things because he never expected to win the elections, he just wanted to consolidate his position of power inside his own party which he did not seem able to control. All polls before the massacre indicated that the conservatives would win, the only doubt was whether their majority would be absolute or only relative. Many people in Spain opposed the war, but most were led by enemies of freedom, radical leftists, fanatics who consider themselves the only legitimate intellectuals and who hate the USA. The war was protested because the USA was at it (oil, imperialism, innocent victims) and United Nations did not legalize it; there were no comments then that we were putting ourselves at risk. They have said nothing about many other wars in the world, and they encouraged the intervention in Serbia. The terrorist massacre changed the election. Polls have shown that a high percentage of leftist who usually do not vote decided to do so, and many people changed their vote after the massacre, not after the war. I do not know any libertarians who have voted socialist. Free market defenders are not many but are in or with PP as a lesser evil.

Aznar did not achieve loosening labor regulations, the left organized a general strike and unfortunately the new laws, which anyway meant only minor changes, were retired. Aznar is unpopular only for the leftists, many people who opposed the war wanted him or his party to stay in power. Aznar is the first politician ever in Spain who refuses to go for a third term. Aznar did not sell out the nation to appease the Bush administration, he had decided long before the war to end our foreign dependence on France (a socialist bureaucratic state with imperial aspirations and no scruples about gaining advantage without concern for others) and side with the USA (maybe not the land of the free anymore, but at least freer than most). The Spanish military are doing police work in Iraq, they did not participate in the war. Zapatero has not promised to pull the troops out of Irak right after being elected, he will keep them there if United Nations takes responsibility for the country.

Spain has a very decentralized government, but in a manner very far from the libertarian ideal of regional competition in favor of freedom. Regional autonomous governments increase taxes and regulations whenever they have the opportunity.

ETA are Marxist-Leninist terrorists, not just a separatist group; they have killed almost a thousand people in a few decades; they intoxicate public opinion systematically denouncing police tortures. The PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) in government are national socialists. There is no oppression from the central government in the Basque Country, they enjoy a wide autonomy. And if they were to secede, what would happen to half the population there who want to remain politically tied to Spain and who now live under constant intimidation of street vandalism and terrorist killings and kidnappings? Basque secessionists do not accept the right of secession from them of Alava, one of the three Basque provinces were nationalists are in clear minority, and they also want to take with them another Spanish region, Navarra (which has a small minority of Basque speaking people), and three French regions. Basque Nationalists were inspired by a despicable madman, Sabino Arana, and they have rewritten history for their own sake.

The demonstrations after the massacre were a complex event: some people were against government, others for it, all against terrorism (from ETA or from Islamic fundamentalists). Spanish mobs think as much as any other mob: not much at all. The unexpected catastrophe was clumsily managed by government (calls to newspapers and embassies insisting on ETA when nothing was clear), but it is a misguiding oversimplification to assert that the government lied to the people. It is absurd to speak of lying when the truth is not known. Right after the event almost everyone said it was ETA, even socialists and Basque nationalists. ETA had recent precedents in previous months of attempted massacres frustrated by the police. The day before the massacre there were threats against RENFE, the state railway. ETA does not always call before a bomb, they have targeted civilians, and they were getting so weak that a huge bombing was feared from them as an attempt to reverse the trend. The left intoxicated public opinion as usual speaking of an inexistent kamikaze and of attempts of government to implement a coup d’état and cancel the elections. When the first clues were found and people were arrested the public was informed, but everything seemed too easy, as if clues had been left behind on purpose to confuse the investigators. Some people protested that secrets of the investigation were being made available for the terrorists. Many socialist leaders still believed it was ETA even after it was known about the Islamic connection. Things are not clear yet, and ETA has had strong connections with Muslim fundamentalists.

It is asserted that invading other people’s countries tends to make people mad, and they tend to strike back. Whose countries? Did peaceful Iraqis control their country? Many Iraqis seem to live better now than with Hussein, and I hope military troops can retire as soon as possible and let Iraqis decide their own future without killing each other. Current suspects of the Spanish massacre are Moroccan, not Iraqis. In a free society no one may be forced to help other people, but that does not imply that we may not freely help people oppressed by totalitarian regimes, of course without killing innocents and without making things worse. I wish we could think about how to achieve this, unless we are happy with letting thugs predate their hapless victims. Apodictic analyses and claims of inexorability of retaliation are quite problematic in the real world we live in. The same epistemological limitations of economics apply to political analysis. Islamic terrorists and dictators are not decent people, they can claim they are provoked by anything they do not like: homosexuality, consumerism, atheism, freedom. We are all infidels for them, no matter what we do, they want us destroyed, they are not interested in negotiations. Countries not involved with the Iraq war also receive terrorist threats. In the Spanish case the terror act will probably result in increasing government power. That’s what socialists are about. The conservatives in power were no libertarians, but they were our lesser evil. I am sorry about the increase in government in the USA, the PATRIOT Act, the huge government spending, the loss of freedom and all that. I have agreed with most of what the Mises Institute has said against American Imperialism, but we are no better in Spain with socialists in power.

Llewellyn answers rhetorically: “Don’t we all?” to ‘bambi’ Zapatero’s: “I want a government that does not intervene in the economy.”

To answer the “don’t we all question” so as to bind governments would require a referendum. Because government employees (including elected representatives?) fear that we (nearly) all do want a government that does not intervene in the economy (not least by taxing us to raise standing armies, maintain the military-industry complex, and conduct wars), they conduct no such referendums.

Of course private polling businesses could poll significant samples, and if their results were well publicised, this would at least stir wider public debate. I could type much more, particularly about the use of secret ballots to “defeat the franchise”.

For now I’ll leave the suggestion that Mises economists consider sponsoring such polls and how to spark wider debate among many Americans. Perhaps the plausible scenario portrayed by the Orwellian elites were less plausible than Llewellyn fears. Few of us have the courage to defy, even to a pollster who encourages honesty, the Orwellian propaganda that implies that most (patriotic) people want war! Polling with secret ballots might show very different opinions!

Also for any curious about the use of secret ballots to “defeat the franchise”, see my post under ‘The Myth of Efficient Government Service’.

‘It is not caving in to the bees to stop poking a stick into their hive’

The suggestion that terrorism is legitimate response to American or western foreign policy is misguided and dangerous. The self-declared goals of the Islamists (unlike most other terrorists) are not intended ever to be meet. For example not only do they want all US forces withdrawn from Iraq and the Middle East, they also want the removal of the governments of Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and their replacement with religious regimes ruled my imams– and judging from their writings their ultimate aim is the conversion or death of all non-believers – which is why they are uninterested in negotiation. It is irresponsible to conflate the desires of nihilistic murders with ‘Islamic concerns’ – the desires of most Muslims are very different.

From their transcripts and writings, it is quite clear that Al Qaeda (the letter claiming responsibility for the Madrid attack said ‘You love life – we love death) do hate western democracy. To deny this is to refuse to take the terrorists at their own word and insist like the Left does that some underlying legitimate cause must be behind this. Leading leftists in Europe demand global redistribution of income on a vast scale because they cling to the idea that poverty somehow causes terrorism.

Europe, and particularly socialist governments have a long and sordid history of giving into terrorists. Unfortunately this does not stop them from willfully intervening in the economy whenever it suits them.
I do not therefore hold out any hope that Zapatero will reduce the role of the state in Spain. Incidentally, if a similar tragedy were to occur in the UK the leading opponents of the war on Iraq, the Liberal Democrats couple their dislike of G.W Bush with a desire to raise taxation and to vastly increase government spending on health, education, pensions etc as well as appease terrorists.