The bad news piles up day after day, hour after hour. This morning I read where the unemployment rate among the young is 52.8%, up from a rate in the lower 20s on average. In the face of this, two months ago the government raised the minimum wage, an act of force which always takes it toll on the least skilled and least knowledgeable the most. The young and the poor take this hit.
Rather than free the economy such that people can make agreements to work for a wage, any wage they are willing to accept, the government sees all of this as more reason to redistribute people's wealth to the poor. This is insane.
But this is not the only thing that is insane.
We have an Administration and a Congress that are hell-bent on an agenda - and it is an agenda with a poor, extremely poor, track record. Socialism, with its latest incarnation known as Progressivism, is a total failure. Government force, in fact, except to stop force initiated by someone against another's rights, is a failure as far as I can see. People will disagree with me on this, but I'm not persuaded. If something is so damn good, why does government have to hold a gun to people's heads in order to force them to it? There's something off in their argument.
Freedom provides abundance and in the process makes available the things that the poor need. (The poor is the current justification for everything.) This is the avenue to a higher standard of living for all people. But instead of recognizing this, this government is into total regression.
What happened? Did we as a culture get hung up on dealing with a flood of wealth? Was it so good that suddenly some diabolical moralistic puritanism suddenly overwhelmed us? That's how it seems.
Guilt has its power and now we are besieged with stories that the population will either be decimated by Swine Flu or too much carbon dioxide in the air. Neither of these dire predictions are going to pan out. Only an unearned guilt for being a bad generally happy, productive nation could give them any consideration.
There are many steps on the road to a successful outcome whereby society is lifted to another level. One thing is for damn sure true. It is never caused by government force.
And yet, that is what we are seeing in dump-truck loads. And that is what all the tea party fuss is really about. As another truck up-ends its bed, the government force required via taxation or regulations is just dumped on the people. We don't like it. In fact, we hate it!
Well, some seem to like it. Some think it will cause the ideal society. Some are apologists for it, desperately trying to rationalize it via non-essential reason and argument. (They don't question whether it is right or wrong, just whether we can afford it. They are like the ACORN employees up a few rungs on the intellectual scale.) And, some want to reside in the trappings of tradition, honoring "The Man who is our President" rather than really holding him accountable.
And there are those who are cynical about it or simply passive. "We are all going to die anyway and someone's going to throw dirt on our face, so why get all worked up?" Or, "I can't solve it so I'm not going to worry about it."
The unreality is everywhere. The government has exploded its spending and now it is to the point that we are not going to be able to get our production of good and services to the point where we will ever be able to pay for it. And the government doesn't even care. Geithner has talked about some other currency becoming the store of value for the world. This means to me that he and the government do not want to be held accountable to keep the currency sound. "Noooo. That would mean keeping spending in check. Can't do that. Too many mouths to feed."
Suddenly the "worker" is vaunted and the businessman, the creator of businesses and jobs which the worker works, vilified. The bigger the business the more hated the businessman. Isn't it obvious except to the willfully blind, that making it harder morally and practically for the businessman to succeed means that there will be fewer jobs? And, when we are down to street markets, do you really think that the prior laborers will produce better goods and do well rather than those with a brain and the entrepreneurial spirit? Not likely. But Michael Moore is undaunted.
And there is nothing more insane than the environmentalists. These people are the new "Christians" marching to war. "Onward 'Environ' soldiers, marching as to war." They will fight for the life of a fish any day before the life of a man. If man comes in last in this value war, then I say, "Screw the planet."
When it comes to the environment, Al Gore is head "dementia-ist." But Obama is not far behind. At the UN, he said this: "If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders. Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources. Development will be devastated by drought and famine. Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear." I would like to add this: "If man doesn't change his ways, man, along with every worm in the earth and bird in the air shall pass from the face of the earth forever, and ever." Here is a man with a clear case of what I call biblical insanity. (Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a much larger context for appreciating how the earth and its climate works.)
And while the politicians, Obama leader among them, castigate greed as the almighty sin, he greedily grabs political power tying everyone hand and foot - except all those who love the double standard and bask in its light. "We know better and besides, we won," they tell us. They know when its time for a person to live or die and aim to insert themselves between you and your body. Businessmen who seek to profit off this aren't really businessmen in my book. They are just the sucker fish attached to the body of the whale. We are at a low ebb on the integrity scale.
In a free country, you get narcissists. They are part of the colorful range of expression which a free country begets. The culture takes them in stride waiting for their egomania to do them in. It normally does unless they produce something of lasting value.
Strong egos are necessary for any forward motion of society so I'm not damning them per se. There are healthy egos and unhealthy egos. Narcissists are unhealthy egos. Commentators have been seeing Obama as a narcissist for some time. But in the UN speech he went further than before. He had to make the United States small and himself "The One" who is saving it and the world. (And if you want to get a clear picture of how full of s--t he is, he told the UN Thursday how he handled Guantanamo and today we learn he's not going to handle it.)
Obama has an agenda. Many have seen this. Now it is obvious that his agenda precludes his seeing or paying attention to reality, which is asserting itself all around him. People are protesting the dump-truck approach to instituting his agenda. His ACORNs and Czars are seen as devoid of a moral compass or outright destroyers. Do you think he will get it? I'm not sure he is capable.
We've had plenty of folly in this country, but has there been a time when it has been greater?
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
We Need a Return to Principled Government
(This piece is by Amit Ghate and appeared at Pajamas Media here on September 15, 2009.)
It’s widely recognized that our government is in dire shape. Our annual deficits are in the trillions of dollars. Unfunded entitlement programs run many times that. Lobbyists and earmarking rule Washington. Special interests, including public-sector unions, environmental groups, the AARP, and countless others, vie against one another for exorbitant privileges — all meted out at taxpayers’ expense.
Our most responsible mainstream news venues, like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, often carry stories exposing the sobering facts. The analyses are penetrating, succinct, and eloquent. But the recommendations? Timid and trite. The best they can offer is to advise moderation: slow the growth of government here, cut back a program there, oppose a few details of the most onerous regulations, but basically resign oneself to the status quo.
It wasn’t always so. When faced with more difficult problems, our Founding Fathers imagined, created, and then fought for a radically new idea of government. Why were they able to do so, when our modern leaders and pundits can’t?
For a hint, contrast the approach of today’s politicians to that used in other fields. In physics and engineering, for instance, problems aren’t met by moderation, compromise, or resignation — they’re solved by reference to principles. Confronted with a new challenge, the first question engineers ask themselves is: “How do Newton’s laws of motion apply?” Similarly, biologists and free-market economists look respectively to the principles of evolution and of supply and demand to guide their thinking.
Yet an adherence to principles is what’s so conspicuously absent from today’s politics. Conversely, the Founders were paragons of principled action. Hence their historical success and our current failure.
The Founders’ deep conviction in their principles was borne of the process by which they arrived at them. Just as physicists and biologists derive their guiding principles from observation and theory, so did the Founders. They began with an exhaustive study of every major society in history. They looked at what worked and what didn’t, how men actually fared under numerous political systems. And their standard was the outcome of ordinary citizens — not kings or popes — because to them each individual counted. They also studied the philosophical and political theories of John Locke and others. Based on these works they came to regard each man as a moral end in himself who must exercise his reason to survive.
The lessons of history and philosophy proved that, to be successful, man must be left free to think, choose, and act for himself. The Founders captured this conclusion in a revolutionary new political principle: the protection of individual rights. In their formulation they were as careful as scientists. They correctly defined rights as protecting freedom of action, not guaranteeing success, results, or goods.
Moreover they understood rights to be universal, i.e., nothing can be a right for one person which entails the violation of another’s. (Though they accomplished so much else, tragically the Founders didn’t choose to abolish slavery. This shameful and glaring self-contradiction almost tore the country apart in the decades that followed.)
Armed with the principle of individual rights, the Founders proposed radically new solutions to their problems. Indeed, against all odds, they threw off the shackles of the world’s superpower and established a constitutional republic essentially from scratch. The explicit, overarching purpose of that government? “To secure the rights of each individual.” For much of its existence the nation worked to perfect this idea, abolishing the travesty of slavery, and eventually extending rights to all.
If there were ever any doubt that a consistent protection of individual rights is the proper principle to guide politics, it was laid to rest by America’s dynamic and unprecedented success. We all know of her unheralded prosperity and technological advances. But there’s perhaps an even more eloquent testimonial to the morality and practicality of her founding principle. Tens of millions of men, women, and children from around the world endured enormous hardships to make their way to her shores, solely for the prospect of living free — by right.
Unfortunately for them, and for us, the country slowly went off track. Both by a corruption of the principle of rights, and by a growing disregard for principles generally. Rights came to mean anything someone might need or wish for: we had “rights” to jobs, education, health care, etc. Similarly, principled action in politics gave way to seat-of-the-pants policy-making aimed at placating the loudest lobbyists.
As a result, rights were no longer inalienable. They were bartered and infringed at the government’s pleasure or the voters’ whims. The effect of each new pseudo “right” was to violate the legitimate rights of those forced to provide them. One restrictive regulation led to the next, and each government-extorted privilege created another class of special interests. Without a principle to clearly limit its role, the scope and size of government mushroomed. Hence our current situation.
Yet as bad as it is, we could quickly turn it around by injecting our fundamental principle back into the debate. For instance, we often hear the phrase “limited government” bandied about by the mainstream media. But without a standard to do the limiting, the phrase is empty. It’s time to point out that in its original and proper use, “limited government” meant limited to the protection of individual rights. Everything else was — and is — beyond the government’s scope.
Consider what this would mean to some of the problems mentioned earlier. Getting the government out of the economy, for instance, would obviate any lobbying, earmarking, or special interest warfare. Under a rights-respecting system, any individual or group who desires wealth would have to obtain it the old fashioned way — by earning it.
Similarly, most social programs would be (gradually) eliminated, since their existence violates the rights of those being forced to fund them. Instead, the minority of people in real need would have to rely on the abundant generosity of Americans to voluntarily assist them. (Historically this has worked well, from the 19th century where doctors routinely gave unpaid care, through to current times where private aid for hurricane and Tsunami victims comes more copiously — and reliably — than from bureaucratic government programs.) Of course, none of this will be easy or painless — but that’s only because we’ve veered so far from our founding principle.
Contrary to today’s pundits, we don’t have to resign ourselves to more of the same in politics. With the principle of individual rights to guide us, bold solutions to our problems are possible. Indeed, with it as their guide, the Founders overcame enormous obstacles to create the greatest nation in history. We can too. All it takes is to recommit to the principle.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
The REAL New World Coming
Today here at PJTV is a video pointing to what I think is the biggest breakthrough of a social/cultural/political type that has happened in 80 years.
Ever since the Roosevelt's New Deal, America has been instituting social programs. They are sold on the idea that they "help" people. The question and glaring contradiction that has been here all along is "If government programs to help people is a GOOD thing, then why must they be forced?" Why must government make them mandatory?
The screaming contradiction in this idea is that when a person is forced to do something for another or even himself, it can no longer be considered the good. A good is opposite a bad. One has choices and he chooses the good or the bad depending on the requirements of his life as he sees them. Whether it is good or bad for his life, or culturally good or bad for society in general, shows up in the consequences. He may think it through or just feel like doing it, but where the rubber meets the road is in the results.
When force is introduced into the picture, the person forced is prevented from being good or bad. Given that the alternatives are eliminated, he must do what he is required to do.
And, the force is there to prevent him from doing what he may have wanted and thought was good. Further, doing a forced "good" devoid of the life force invested in achieving a good is itself bad. The entire reason for doing it is stripped from the actor. Given this, the results of a forced program are dehumanizing, i.e., stripped of what it is to be human, and are ALWAYS bad.
We see this in Government Education. People know that it is compulsory. In a free society, if people went to school, the reason they were going would be paramount and a topic of conversation. That entire conversation of purpose which would naturally be there is eliminated by the compulsory nature of Government Education. And, this directly affects the results produced by Government Education.
Force eliminates everything of value. Value is something which one seeks to gain and/or keep. It can be anything - an internal state or a result in the world. When one takes an action to achieve it, he is in the process of producing that value for himself. And this is the life force - the spirit and the body in action. It is the essence of what life is, a process of self-generated action to maintain life.
The bombshell of the video I cite above is that it reveals the results of the trapped underclass. The videos exposing ACORN show that. Two young people had the idea to pose to an ACORN agency wanting to get a house which they were going to use for prostitution. They had a secret camera which they used to film the interaction.
The videos produced have revealed that the ACORN workers have no distinctions as to what is moral or immoral, legal or illegal. In fact they offer advice as to how to get around the government so they would not get caught. The prostitutes were to be girls brought in from El Salvador. They were underage and illegal immigrants. One of the ACORN reps said this was good because they would not have a social security number which could identify them. None of them raised even an eyebrow. The ACORN workers gave advice on how to avoid taxes and set up their business under the radar. In a video taken in a San Bernardino office, a worker felt so comfortable with the two posers that had come for advice that she admitted to shooting her husband in the head because she was scared of him.
These people have no moral compass whatsoever. How did this happen?
What is now being revealed is that America's social programs have trapped people in dependency where making good choices makes no difference. Being trapped in these programs slowly sucks the value of valuing itself out of these people. What's the use anyway? So an alternative universe grows up in these communities - a universe that has a completely different set of values than people oriented to reality and achieving values. These values are false values in an attempt to have some power in a shattered world. One could say that these programs cause entire communities besieged by mental illness.
And THIS is the big realization. THIS HAS BEEN CAUSED. It is not how healthy people operate. And, it is not how free people operate. And to cause this is "criminal" even though cloaked in government sanction. People care more for their pets than the "do-gooder advocates" care for the people that they vote to be taken care of.
The implication of this is that freedom, the freedom to make choices - even bad ones - is a requirement for being a healthy human being.
Although both political parties have been involved in these travesties - Bush expanding government control over our lives in many ways - the Democrats have been involved in this for years and right now have taken it on in spades. The Progressives openly advocate producing what they see as a good society. And now the latest program in the years-long chain of programs is Government Health Care which would have us all come to be like this underclass.
Without freedom to make choices, people become morally stunted. Because they cannot choose, they lose the capacity to make vital choices (choices which affect one's life force and desire for living) for their lives. The results are graphically before us.
This is what I think evil looks like. When the course of one's life makes no difference to oneself, the distinctions for living a vital human life are lost. We have certainly seen its face in these videos.
A Second Major Point
The other thing that is so apparent from the ACORN videos is how helpful and related the ACORN representatives are. I read one comment on an article about these videos that said "I know that woman (the one in the Maryland video) is evil but there is something about her that has me love her." This factor is the way she is relating.
This ACORN woman passes all of the relatability tests. She's there not to pronounce judgment, as none of the ACORN representatives shown in the videos did. And she is there to have things work. She has no moral compass, accepts the ACORN mission and gets busy. She never deals with the content of what the posers are saying to her. She simply amplifies what they are seeking. In the case of the one woman revealing her killing her husband, this was an effort to tell one on herself in order that the posers would feel free to talk and relate.
This is the major lure now used in our society. Oprah is good at it. President Obama is good at it which is one of the major reasons that he is attractive to so many people. I understand this and feel the pull of it too.
The other big bombshell of these videos is that relating apart from content is not the purpose nor the meat of communication and anyone who takes it to be is doomed to being a wayward itinerant through life. Further the person who understands how to use relating to cause results in other people finds himself in a position of using other people. This is about as quick an avenue to abuse as one can think of.
The area of knowledge that the study of relating falls under is ontology, the knowledge of being. It comes out of the existential school of philosophy and has been integrated into much of our society. It is the false idea that if you relate to people in the right way that nothing else matters, that you can get them to do anything. People can relay to you the most horrendous stories and a part of you wants to say, "Aren't you sweet."
This philosophy has given rise in this era to the idea that government control can be accomplished sugar-coated. And it is this belief which has given the Progressives new life. Where it runs aground is not in its way of relating but in the fact that the government seeks to control human life at all - that it somehow has the right to tell people how to live their lives.
This video is going to have far-reaching effects in both areas and portends a REAL new world coming, a world with more concern for what's real and more political freedom.
(This is related to the previous blog post, "The Affirmative Action President Test.")
Ever since the Roosevelt's New Deal, America has been instituting social programs. They are sold on the idea that they "help" people. The question and glaring contradiction that has been here all along is "If government programs to help people is a GOOD thing, then why must they be forced?" Why must government make them mandatory?
The screaming contradiction in this idea is that when a person is forced to do something for another or even himself, it can no longer be considered the good. A good is opposite a bad. One has choices and he chooses the good or the bad depending on the requirements of his life as he sees them. Whether it is good or bad for his life, or culturally good or bad for society in general, shows up in the consequences. He may think it through or just feel like doing it, but where the rubber meets the road is in the results.
When force is introduced into the picture, the person forced is prevented from being good or bad. Given that the alternatives are eliminated, he must do what he is required to do.
And, the force is there to prevent him from doing what he may have wanted and thought was good. Further, doing a forced "good" devoid of the life force invested in achieving a good is itself bad. The entire reason for doing it is stripped from the actor. Given this, the results of a forced program are dehumanizing, i.e., stripped of what it is to be human, and are ALWAYS bad.
We see this in Government Education. People know that it is compulsory. In a free society, if people went to school, the reason they were going would be paramount and a topic of conversation. That entire conversation of purpose which would naturally be there is eliminated by the compulsory nature of Government Education. And, this directly affects the results produced by Government Education.
Force eliminates everything of value. Value is something which one seeks to gain and/or keep. It can be anything - an internal state or a result in the world. When one takes an action to achieve it, he is in the process of producing that value for himself. And this is the life force - the spirit and the body in action. It is the essence of what life is, a process of self-generated action to maintain life.
The bombshell of the video I cite above is that it reveals the results of the trapped underclass. The videos exposing ACORN show that. Two young people had the idea to pose to an ACORN agency wanting to get a house which they were going to use for prostitution. They had a secret camera which they used to film the interaction.
The videos produced have revealed that the ACORN workers have no distinctions as to what is moral or immoral, legal or illegal. In fact they offer advice as to how to get around the government so they would not get caught. The prostitutes were to be girls brought in from El Salvador. They were underage and illegal immigrants. One of the ACORN reps said this was good because they would not have a social security number which could identify them. None of them raised even an eyebrow. The ACORN workers gave advice on how to avoid taxes and set up their business under the radar. In a video taken in a San Bernardino office, a worker felt so comfortable with the two posers that had come for advice that she admitted to shooting her husband in the head because she was scared of him.
These people have no moral compass whatsoever. How did this happen?
What is now being revealed is that America's social programs have trapped people in dependency where making good choices makes no difference. Being trapped in these programs slowly sucks the value of valuing itself out of these people. What's the use anyway? So an alternative universe grows up in these communities - a universe that has a completely different set of values than people oriented to reality and achieving values. These values are false values in an attempt to have some power in a shattered world. One could say that these programs cause entire communities besieged by mental illness.
And THIS is the big realization. THIS HAS BEEN CAUSED. It is not how healthy people operate. And, it is not how free people operate. And to cause this is "criminal" even though cloaked in government sanction. People care more for their pets than the "do-gooder advocates" care for the people that they vote to be taken care of.
The implication of this is that freedom, the freedom to make choices - even bad ones - is a requirement for being a healthy human being.
Although both political parties have been involved in these travesties - Bush expanding government control over our lives in many ways - the Democrats have been involved in this for years and right now have taken it on in spades. The Progressives openly advocate producing what they see as a good society. And now the latest program in the years-long chain of programs is Government Health Care which would have us all come to be like this underclass.
Without freedom to make choices, people become morally stunted. Because they cannot choose, they lose the capacity to make vital choices (choices which affect one's life force and desire for living) for their lives. The results are graphically before us.
This is what I think evil looks like. When the course of one's life makes no difference to oneself, the distinctions for living a vital human life are lost. We have certainly seen its face in these videos.
A Second Major Point
The other thing that is so apparent from the ACORN videos is how helpful and related the ACORN representatives are. I read one comment on an article about these videos that said "I know that woman (the one in the Maryland video) is evil but there is something about her that has me love her." This factor is the way she is relating.
This ACORN woman passes all of the relatability tests. She's there not to pronounce judgment, as none of the ACORN representatives shown in the videos did. And she is there to have things work. She has no moral compass, accepts the ACORN mission and gets busy. She never deals with the content of what the posers are saying to her. She simply amplifies what they are seeking. In the case of the one woman revealing her killing her husband, this was an effort to tell one on herself in order that the posers would feel free to talk and relate.
This is the major lure now used in our society. Oprah is good at it. President Obama is good at it which is one of the major reasons that he is attractive to so many people. I understand this and feel the pull of it too.
The other big bombshell of these videos is that relating apart from content is not the purpose nor the meat of communication and anyone who takes it to be is doomed to being a wayward itinerant through life. Further the person who understands how to use relating to cause results in other people finds himself in a position of using other people. This is about as quick an avenue to abuse as one can think of.
The area of knowledge that the study of relating falls under is ontology, the knowledge of being. It comes out of the existential school of philosophy and has been integrated into much of our society. It is the false idea that if you relate to people in the right way that nothing else matters, that you can get them to do anything. People can relay to you the most horrendous stories and a part of you wants to say, "Aren't you sweet."
This philosophy has given rise in this era to the idea that government control can be accomplished sugar-coated. And it is this belief which has given the Progressives new life. Where it runs aground is not in its way of relating but in the fact that the government seeks to control human life at all - that it somehow has the right to tell people how to live their lives.
This video is going to have far-reaching effects in both areas and portends a REAL new world coming, a world with more concern for what's real and more political freedom.
(This is related to the previous blog post, "The Affirmative Action President Test.")
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The Affirmative Action President Test
Some months ago I said we cannot have an Affirmative Action President. We are now seeing whether Barack Obama is going to be held to the standards which have governed Affirmative Action or the standards of reality.
The idea of Affirmative Action came into existence following the death of Martin Luther King and the takeover of that movement by people who wanted to exert force. In order to prevent wholesale bloodshed, the guilt-ridden whites ceded what had been their authority in the institutions they controlled to hold people to the standards of their institutions, particularly educational institutions, and decided that blacks, because of their history as a downtrodden people, were not to be held to those standards. Instead of creating programs to bring students below the standards up to those standards, they simply lowered their standards. This, in so many words said, "Well what can you expect of them. We have to do something - anything - except ask them to step up." The blacks that accepted these lower standards took a bite of poisonous fruit.
Barack Obama and Michelle did take that bite and were allowed into these institutions. Barack and Michelle are the products of Affirmative Action.
In the ensuing years, many blacks were "given a chance" by this means and the result has now been produced - an Affirmative Action student is now President. The question is, can he be an Affirmative Action President? I said "no."
The reason I said so is because government is the institution that wields force. Because it has the power to transfer property and assets to other people, the issue is whether people are going to be stripped of their property and their freedom to run their own lives or not.
We are no longer talking about a standard in a voluntary institution. An Affirmative Action standard, which is actually the doing away with standards, if applied in government must be maintained by force. Because it is, the standard must fall or the people will have to give up their freedom and their right to control their own lives and the property they depend on for their lives. This is where the rubber meets the road. Will the standard of individual rights and people rising or falling based on their merit stand, or will it be overthrown for one where they do not have to produce the results, but merely need them? Will a standard be held to or will it be discarded as was done for Affirmative Action?
Thus far, Obama has been winning this battle as he has done much stripping of property and the right to control private property. He's nationalized the banks. He's nationalized GM and Chrysler and transferred assets to his supporters, the labor unions. He's now out to nationalize the medical industry.
With the rise of the Tea Party movement which amounts to the producers resisting this takeover, we see some individuals working overtime to reestablish the guilt that gave rise to Affirmative Action in the first place. We see Maureen Dowd accusing Wilson of racism. We get a clip of Reverend Wright saying that the racists don't like it that things are changing against them. Yesterday we saw Jimmy Carter imputing racism to Wilson. I saw a late night CNN segment on the rise of racism in this country - showing wackos who are racists and imputing that the Tea Party movement is like this.
We are seeing the Affirmative Action President Test in action right now.
How will this be resolved? I remember a statement of Ayn Rand's, "The most consistent wins." The principle is that the most consistent, whether metaphysically right or wrong, wins in the big contest of general public belief. Truth is not determined socially. It is determined by a statement's correspondence to reality. But, what the society as a whole acts on is a social product. If enough people believe a particular thing, right or wrong it is the direction society goes. Thus, the person who can stand for his statement most consistently will win the day.
As long as the grounds for the statements are not challenged and seen to be false, the most consistent will be able to build his constituency.
And in Obama's corner is a very big unchallenged ground indeed.
In this contest, the unchallenged ground is the idea that we should do what is best for society. We should always be mindful of the greater good, the public interest, the thing that is best for the most people, our poor neighbor who isn't doing so well. As Obama says, "We should be our brothers' keeper, our sisters' keeper." We should be "good" people by this standard. The bloody elephant's head in the corner of this belief is that someone must always be sacrificed. Those who do not agree must be created as devoid of human qualities and placed in society's basement. Society can only be merry, gay, joyful and happy if we can just get rid of the freaks, the radicals, the extremists, the party-poopers, the loners, the racists. And this, mind you, not because they did anything wrong but because they said something or went their own way. Jimmy Carter is telling us who the people are that need to be put in the basement.
We hear this ground from all corners of society. The preachers accentuate it weekly from their pulpits. Obama is bold and tells us that profit-seekers themselves are evil and the scourge of society. They are selfish and it is unfair that they have the money they earned through voluntary exchange. At first it was the big firms on Wall Street. Now it is the insurance companies who are the evil people who make money on the backs of the poor. The media pundits are railing against anyone who wants to act independently and so forth. All are telling us who to put into the basement. (And if Obama's railings are not bad enough, he's supported and arbitrarily allocated tax money and investor's money to what looks to be criminal organizations such as ACORN, the SEIU, and the always questionable big Labor Unions.)
Until people can stand for themselves as ends in themselves (individualism and individual rights) and yes, pursue their own self-interest as they see fit, the win will go to the likes of Barack Obama and the advocates on the Left and the Right who want to shove another person into the basement.
This is a tricky fight. We see that Obama is appealing to universal health care as a way to take care of all people. Of course there is a price as there is for everything we need to live. The price? The government will run it and make all the final decisions. We will exist by permit from the government as to whether we will live. (Already the papers are prepared as to how this can be done. You can go here for Ezekiel Emanuel's views.)
Health care, the proponents say, is a right. But it is an arbitrary "economic right", not a natural right. If you live on a desert island, you do not find health care naturally growing on a tree like we find oxygen in our air. It must be produced. Production is an economic activity. You have to take the actions for your health and provide the remedies for your care if sick, or you do not avail yourself of health care. If you need someone else's help in the matter, you have to go to them, honor them, and trade something for that help. The fallacy of the public health care advocates is that to produce the result they seek, they must force people to not live this way. They must force people to be uncivil and violate the natural rights of the person himself and the health care providers.
Health and health care is one of many values that people seek. It is not at any point in time, or for some ever, a value that they seek. To be forced to use one's productive energy to provide health care for other people is as great an injustice as one can find. But, until the people who advocate that all people can live on the surface with none in the basement can firmly stand for their right to work for and produce the values THEY seek and not those other people say they should seek, this battle will not be won.
And if it is not won, then we will have failed the test of the Affirmative Action President. If we fail, everything will be affirmative action in principle, which means, everything will be political. It will have nothing to do with living one's life and reaping the consequences of one's actions. The end of this line of argument is that all goods will be allocated by the government. The truth is, we as human beings will all be living in the basement.
PS: What I see happening now is that the charge of racism is losing its power. The charge is failing because there is no evidence on which to base the charge. It may be just a feeling or it may be something to use to slap the other party/side around. My answer to it is "Great. What else you got? Anything else you want to call me?"
Hopefully President Obama will be able to step up and stand for all people. He's not done it yet. He didn't do it in his famous Race Speech where he jettisoned Reverend Wright. Further he didn't do it in the Gates episode. These instances have led me to conclude so far that Obama is unable to be a leader in this matter.
However, whether he does step up or not may ultimately not make the difference. The circumstances are such that we as a country may get the lesson anyway. I suspect that is what will happen.
Perhaps all the protest against Obama's economic choices and his willingness to sacrifice the producers will show Obama that there is a political reality out here outside of his agenda. If he is the politician that people seem to think he is, he may get that his agenda is not working and will abandon it to redeem his Presidency. This will depend on whether Obama is an independent thinker. It would be great if he has such an epiphany, but again, it may not make the difference. If the country gets the lesson, then Obama will have fulfilled a purpose by showing America what works and what doesn't work. If so, we will have passed the Affirmative Action President Test.
So the great issues of this time are 1) Is America going to get beyond race? and 2) Is America going to reestablish the sanctity of the individual rather than sacrifice him to the almighty group? The first will be accomplished if the latter is accomplished. If the latter is not accomplished, then we will descend into a pressure group battleground with one category of groups being about race.
The idea of Affirmative Action came into existence following the death of Martin Luther King and the takeover of that movement by people who wanted to exert force. In order to prevent wholesale bloodshed, the guilt-ridden whites ceded what had been their authority in the institutions they controlled to hold people to the standards of their institutions, particularly educational institutions, and decided that blacks, because of their history as a downtrodden people, were not to be held to those standards. Instead of creating programs to bring students below the standards up to those standards, they simply lowered their standards. This, in so many words said, "Well what can you expect of them. We have to do something - anything - except ask them to step up." The blacks that accepted these lower standards took a bite of poisonous fruit.
Barack Obama and Michelle did take that bite and were allowed into these institutions. Barack and Michelle are the products of Affirmative Action.
In the ensuing years, many blacks were "given a chance" by this means and the result has now been produced - an Affirmative Action student is now President. The question is, can he be an Affirmative Action President? I said "no."
The reason I said so is because government is the institution that wields force. Because it has the power to transfer property and assets to other people, the issue is whether people are going to be stripped of their property and their freedom to run their own lives or not.
We are no longer talking about a standard in a voluntary institution. An Affirmative Action standard, which is actually the doing away with standards, if applied in government must be maintained by force. Because it is, the standard must fall or the people will have to give up their freedom and their right to control their own lives and the property they depend on for their lives. This is where the rubber meets the road. Will the standard of individual rights and people rising or falling based on their merit stand, or will it be overthrown for one where they do not have to produce the results, but merely need them? Will a standard be held to or will it be discarded as was done for Affirmative Action?
Thus far, Obama has been winning this battle as he has done much stripping of property and the right to control private property. He's nationalized the banks. He's nationalized GM and Chrysler and transferred assets to his supporters, the labor unions. He's now out to nationalize the medical industry.
With the rise of the Tea Party movement which amounts to the producers resisting this takeover, we see some individuals working overtime to reestablish the guilt that gave rise to Affirmative Action in the first place. We see Maureen Dowd accusing Wilson of racism. We get a clip of Reverend Wright saying that the racists don't like it that things are changing against them. Yesterday we saw Jimmy Carter imputing racism to Wilson. I saw a late night CNN segment on the rise of racism in this country - showing wackos who are racists and imputing that the Tea Party movement is like this.
We are seeing the Affirmative Action President Test in action right now.
How will this be resolved? I remember a statement of Ayn Rand's, "The most consistent wins." The principle is that the most consistent, whether metaphysically right or wrong, wins in the big contest of general public belief. Truth is not determined socially. It is determined by a statement's correspondence to reality. But, what the society as a whole acts on is a social product. If enough people believe a particular thing, right or wrong it is the direction society goes. Thus, the person who can stand for his statement most consistently will win the day.
As long as the grounds for the statements are not challenged and seen to be false, the most consistent will be able to build his constituency.
And in Obama's corner is a very big unchallenged ground indeed.
In this contest, the unchallenged ground is the idea that we should do what is best for society. We should always be mindful of the greater good, the public interest, the thing that is best for the most people, our poor neighbor who isn't doing so well. As Obama says, "We should be our brothers' keeper, our sisters' keeper." We should be "good" people by this standard. The bloody elephant's head in the corner of this belief is that someone must always be sacrificed. Those who do not agree must be created as devoid of human qualities and placed in society's basement. Society can only be merry, gay, joyful and happy if we can just get rid of the freaks, the radicals, the extremists, the party-poopers, the loners, the racists. And this, mind you, not because they did anything wrong but because they said something or went their own way. Jimmy Carter is telling us who the people are that need to be put in the basement.
We hear this ground from all corners of society. The preachers accentuate it weekly from their pulpits. Obama is bold and tells us that profit-seekers themselves are evil and the scourge of society. They are selfish and it is unfair that they have the money they earned through voluntary exchange. At first it was the big firms on Wall Street. Now it is the insurance companies who are the evil people who make money on the backs of the poor. The media pundits are railing against anyone who wants to act independently and so forth. All are telling us who to put into the basement. (And if Obama's railings are not bad enough, he's supported and arbitrarily allocated tax money and investor's money to what looks to be criminal organizations such as ACORN, the SEIU, and the always questionable big Labor Unions.)
Until people can stand for themselves as ends in themselves (individualism and individual rights) and yes, pursue their own self-interest as they see fit, the win will go to the likes of Barack Obama and the advocates on the Left and the Right who want to shove another person into the basement.
This is a tricky fight. We see that Obama is appealing to universal health care as a way to take care of all people. Of course there is a price as there is for everything we need to live. The price? The government will run it and make all the final decisions. We will exist by permit from the government as to whether we will live. (Already the papers are prepared as to how this can be done. You can go here for Ezekiel Emanuel's views.)
Health care, the proponents say, is a right. But it is an arbitrary "economic right", not a natural right. If you live on a desert island, you do not find health care naturally growing on a tree like we find oxygen in our air. It must be produced. Production is an economic activity. You have to take the actions for your health and provide the remedies for your care if sick, or you do not avail yourself of health care. If you need someone else's help in the matter, you have to go to them, honor them, and trade something for that help. The fallacy of the public health care advocates is that to produce the result they seek, they must force people to not live this way. They must force people to be uncivil and violate the natural rights of the person himself and the health care providers.
Health and health care is one of many values that people seek. It is not at any point in time, or for some ever, a value that they seek. To be forced to use one's productive energy to provide health care for other people is as great an injustice as one can find. But, until the people who advocate that all people can live on the surface with none in the basement can firmly stand for their right to work for and produce the values THEY seek and not those other people say they should seek, this battle will not be won.
And if it is not won, then we will have failed the test of the Affirmative Action President. If we fail, everything will be affirmative action in principle, which means, everything will be political. It will have nothing to do with living one's life and reaping the consequences of one's actions. The end of this line of argument is that all goods will be allocated by the government. The truth is, we as human beings will all be living in the basement.
PS: What I see happening now is that the charge of racism is losing its power. The charge is failing because there is no evidence on which to base the charge. It may be just a feeling or it may be something to use to slap the other party/side around. My answer to it is "Great. What else you got? Anything else you want to call me?"
Hopefully President Obama will be able to step up and stand for all people. He's not done it yet. He didn't do it in his famous Race Speech where he jettisoned Reverend Wright. Further he didn't do it in the Gates episode. These instances have led me to conclude so far that Obama is unable to be a leader in this matter.
However, whether he does step up or not may ultimately not make the difference. The circumstances are such that we as a country may get the lesson anyway. I suspect that is what will happen.
Perhaps all the protest against Obama's economic choices and his willingness to sacrifice the producers will show Obama that there is a political reality out here outside of his agenda. If he is the politician that people seem to think he is, he may get that his agenda is not working and will abandon it to redeem his Presidency. This will depend on whether Obama is an independent thinker. It would be great if he has such an epiphany, but again, it may not make the difference. If the country gets the lesson, then Obama will have fulfilled a purpose by showing America what works and what doesn't work. If so, we will have passed the Affirmative Action President Test.
So the great issues of this time are 1) Is America going to get beyond race? and 2) Is America going to reestablish the sanctity of the individual rather than sacrifice him to the almighty group? The first will be accomplished if the latter is accomplished. If the latter is not accomplished, then we will descend into a pressure group battleground with one category of groups being about race.
Dear Friend,
Dear Friend,
I saw your strong approval of Obama on Facebook. Why?
I know you think it is virtuous to worry and care about the poor and less fortunate. Fine. I don't have a problem with that - in and of itself if that's what you want to dedicate your life to.
But what is going on now is that Obama is advocating that motive as a his tool of persuasion to have the government provide all of these benefits. And the government is FORCE. It is not a voluntary organization. People do not get to not pay their taxes. If they try that, after some initial conversations and letters, an agent with a gun strapped to his waist will be out to see them.
If you translate this to everyday life, what it means is that if you want to provide for a needy neighbor and didn't have enough money to do that effectively, you would have to enroll people into giving to your cause. Another way would be to rob people of their possessions in order to get the money.
When we ask the government to pass a law to provide, we are asking for this robbery. People don't get to volunteer. They are forced.
So anyone advocating this program is really a person initiating force - not directly, but indirectly by calling on the government, voting for the government, to take this force-initiating action.
I assert this is fundamentally anti-life in every respect and I cannot believe that if you actually thought this through you would ever advocate it. This is why I am taking the time to write you.
There are lots of ways of providing. But doing it at the point of a gun is not a valid one. Just as a robber becomes a menace to peaceful society, you have to understand that by advocating the same action, you are becoming a menance to peaceful society. Do you get this? Think about it.
What this is - the name that no one will call it - is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics. It does damage to people and to society and good will among men and the facts show this to be true over and over and over. I can get those facts for you if you need them to verify that this is so.
You have advocated world peace. I think it is a great and noble goal. Using government to initiate force against its citizens is one of the primary and quickest ways to insure that there will never be peace - let alone world peace.
My best regards to my friend.
Principlex
I saw your strong approval of Obama on Facebook. Why?
I know you think it is virtuous to worry and care about the poor and less fortunate. Fine. I don't have a problem with that - in and of itself if that's what you want to dedicate your life to.
But what is going on now is that Obama is advocating that motive as a his tool of persuasion to have the government provide all of these benefits. And the government is FORCE. It is not a voluntary organization. People do not get to not pay their taxes. If they try that, after some initial conversations and letters, an agent with a gun strapped to his waist will be out to see them.
If you translate this to everyday life, what it means is that if you want to provide for a needy neighbor and didn't have enough money to do that effectively, you would have to enroll people into giving to your cause. Another way would be to rob people of their possessions in order to get the money.
When we ask the government to pass a law to provide, we are asking for this robbery. People don't get to volunteer. They are forced.
So anyone advocating this program is really a person initiating force - not directly, but indirectly by calling on the government, voting for the government, to take this force-initiating action.
I assert this is fundamentally anti-life in every respect and I cannot believe that if you actually thought this through you would ever advocate it. This is why I am taking the time to write you.
There are lots of ways of providing. But doing it at the point of a gun is not a valid one. Just as a robber becomes a menace to peaceful society, you have to understand that by advocating the same action, you are becoming a menance to peaceful society. Do you get this? Think about it.
What this is - the name that no one will call it - is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics. It does damage to people and to society and good will among men and the facts show this to be true over and over and over. I can get those facts for you if you need them to verify that this is so.
You have advocated world peace. I think it is a great and noble goal. Using government to initiate force against its citizens is one of the primary and quickest ways to insure that there will never be peace - let alone world peace.
My best regards to my friend.
Principlex
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Screw Your Neighbor
Today there are hundreds of thousands of people marching in Washington. They are there protesting being screwed by the government.
Just who exactly is getting screwed?
This is the first time I've seen the producers of the nation marching on Washington. We are in a battle of the producers vs. the takers - the one's who produce a good or service vs. those who exist off the theft (by law, of course) of their production. The WHO that is getting screwed are the producers.
The Civil Right which scares both political parties to death and which has not been claimed ever since it was challenged and began its erosion over a hundred years ago is the right to economic freedom. Man to survive must use his mind to do a job, start a business or provide any good or service. This right has been so decimated by government control, regulation, taxation and general outlawing that the government has become the enemy of people everywhere.
I talk to idiots regarding their freedom all the time. They always focus on Republicans vs. Democrats, big businessmen vs. the little guy, whether they get a benefit while never thinking about how and who provides it, or some insignificant issue like whether someone accepts whether they have or advocate gay sex. All of this is focusing on a portion of the elephant and never seeing the whole thing. (Idiots are people with an opinion who are uneducated, ignorant, of the topic at hand and the premises upon which their opinion depends.)
The whole thing is freedom and it includes economic freedom.
Although our freedom has been sliding down the government drain for many, many years, the election of Obama has brought the issue to a head as he is wholesale redistributing your possessions into the hands of those who didn't earn them and who don't value them.
I'm hearing right now there are over a million people in Washington DC. (I'm getting direct reporting from WDC and the people who have seen many marches on Washington know that when the mall or Pennsylvania Avenue fills from point A to point B, that's a particular number of people. The news is reporting a conservative estimate - maybe a hundred thousand - but it is now looking to be many more than that.) (And this from Instapundit: STEPHEN GREEN IS continuously updating with reports from DC. He says ABC has estimated the crowd at 2 million. Here's another article on it. Others think a million is a closer number. DC Police estimate the number at 1.2 million.)
This picture was taken in the morning while the protest was still growing and before it peaked. Of course Obama and Pelosi, to name two, left town. Hmmm.
The essence of the new politics is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR - take his possessions, his assets, his life. The poor and do-gooders who think that Obama's redistribution is justice - social justice - are wrong about that and will reap the whirlwind. They think they are going to get something that SHOULD be theirs for nothing by means of government fiat. They say it is fair, but it isn't fair by any rational standard. And because it isn't, they can only achieve this by force. In the background behind ever redistribution is the government and its gun. The poor's hand on the stick they hold will eventually be crowded off as the corrupt take all the spoils of this battle. (We see this in ACORN where poor blacks are hired for a pittance and required to produce X number of voter registrations or X number of housing loans without standards or training while their leaders are fabulously crooked and fabulously wealthy. What's worse is when the peons are caught, they are fired as if they are the problem. Used. That's all they are for - to be used. This is the face of corruption. More on this topic here.) When the initiators, the entrepreneurs, the risk takers who no longer have a reason to produce in order to enjoy their life have cut back or stopped, all of us pay the price.
And, those who lap this pablum and will pay dearly are those on the lower end of the economic scale. The standard of living rises or falls for all of society with the wealthy leading the way. Just as a computer cost $5,000 or more when they first became available, now they are less than $500. This is so as the rich saw their value and then others saw it. The demand caused producers to find ways to produce them for lower and lower costs - still providing the value and even adding more value as they learned they could and wanted to attract buyers to their products. Now even the poor have computers.
The government can provide none of this thing. When it comes to the economy, it is a parasite. It doesn't produce in the economic realm of life. It only sucks the life blood out of it. And it depends on people willing to SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR in order to do it. Every intervention, be it regulation, licenses, taxes, you name it, is an infringement on freedom and a drain on life force. Yes we need a government, but only to provide justice and protection, and that only if grounded in protecting individual rights - the right of every man to be an end in himself. The right for him to live his life, enjoy his liberty and pursue that which has, by his choice, his life worth living.
Down with SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics! It's poison. It's deadly. It's divisive. There is nothing more obscene than watching Washington indulge its greed for power and money. And it does so because those who support it want that for themselves. They are willing to SCREW THEIR NEIGHBOR for it and this is causing a battle for life and the principles which govern it itself.
Freedom produces abundance. Statism - government control in any of its forms - leaves us with the opposite: diminished everything - including good will. How can you trust your neighbor who is sucking up to the government to take what you have earned?
The American ideal of freedom and the trader principle is what we want for ourselves and offer the world. This we must uphold and it is worth a fight.
Just who exactly is getting screwed?
This is the first time I've seen the producers of the nation marching on Washington. We are in a battle of the producers vs. the takers - the one's who produce a good or service vs. those who exist off the theft (by law, of course) of their production. The WHO that is getting screwed are the producers.
The Civil Right which scares both political parties to death and which has not been claimed ever since it was challenged and began its erosion over a hundred years ago is the right to economic freedom. Man to survive must use his mind to do a job, start a business or provide any good or service. This right has been so decimated by government control, regulation, taxation and general outlawing that the government has become the enemy of people everywhere.
I talk to idiots regarding their freedom all the time. They always focus on Republicans vs. Democrats, big businessmen vs. the little guy, whether they get a benefit while never thinking about how and who provides it, or some insignificant issue like whether someone accepts whether they have or advocate gay sex. All of this is focusing on a portion of the elephant and never seeing the whole thing. (Idiots are people with an opinion who are uneducated, ignorant, of the topic at hand and the premises upon which their opinion depends.)
The whole thing is freedom and it includes economic freedom.
Although our freedom has been sliding down the government drain for many, many years, the election of Obama has brought the issue to a head as he is wholesale redistributing your possessions into the hands of those who didn't earn them and who don't value them.
I'm hearing right now there are over a million people in Washington DC. (I'm getting direct reporting from WDC and the people who have seen many marches on Washington know that when the mall or Pennsylvania Avenue fills from point A to point B, that's a particular number of people. The news is reporting a conservative estimate - maybe a hundred thousand - but it is now looking to be many more than that.) (And this from Instapundit: STEPHEN GREEN IS continuously updating with reports from DC. He says ABC has estimated the crowd at 2 million. Here's another article on it. Others think a million is a closer number. DC Police estimate the number at 1.2 million.)
This picture was taken in the morning while the protest was still growing and before it peaked. Of course Obama and Pelosi, to name two, left town. Hmmm.
The essence of the new politics is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR - take his possessions, his assets, his life. The poor and do-gooders who think that Obama's redistribution is justice - social justice - are wrong about that and will reap the whirlwind. They think they are going to get something that SHOULD be theirs for nothing by means of government fiat. They say it is fair, but it isn't fair by any rational standard. And because it isn't, they can only achieve this by force. In the background behind ever redistribution is the government and its gun. The poor's hand on the stick they hold will eventually be crowded off as the corrupt take all the spoils of this battle. (We see this in ACORN where poor blacks are hired for a pittance and required to produce X number of voter registrations or X number of housing loans without standards or training while their leaders are fabulously crooked and fabulously wealthy. What's worse is when the peons are caught, they are fired as if they are the problem. Used. That's all they are for - to be used. This is the face of corruption. More on this topic here.) When the initiators, the entrepreneurs, the risk takers who no longer have a reason to produce in order to enjoy their life have cut back or stopped, all of us pay the price.
And, those who lap this pablum and will pay dearly are those on the lower end of the economic scale. The standard of living rises or falls for all of society with the wealthy leading the way. Just as a computer cost $5,000 or more when they first became available, now they are less than $500. This is so as the rich saw their value and then others saw it. The demand caused producers to find ways to produce them for lower and lower costs - still providing the value and even adding more value as they learned they could and wanted to attract buyers to their products. Now even the poor have computers.
The government can provide none of this thing. When it comes to the economy, it is a parasite. It doesn't produce in the economic realm of life. It only sucks the life blood out of it. And it depends on people willing to SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR in order to do it. Every intervention, be it regulation, licenses, taxes, you name it, is an infringement on freedom and a drain on life force. Yes we need a government, but only to provide justice and protection, and that only if grounded in protecting individual rights - the right of every man to be an end in himself. The right for him to live his life, enjoy his liberty and pursue that which has, by his choice, his life worth living.
Down with SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics! It's poison. It's deadly. It's divisive. There is nothing more obscene than watching Washington indulge its greed for power and money. And it does so because those who support it want that for themselves. They are willing to SCREW THEIR NEIGHBOR for it and this is causing a battle for life and the principles which govern it itself.
Freedom produces abundance. Statism - government control in any of its forms - leaves us with the opposite: diminished everything - including good will. How can you trust your neighbor who is sucking up to the government to take what you have earned?
The American ideal of freedom and the trader principle is what we want for ourselves and offer the world. This we must uphold and it is worth a fight.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The Truth Behind "United We Serve"
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 4, 2009--President Obama’s United We Serve campaign is in full swing, with the airing of public service announcements all across the country. What is the real meaning behind this initiative?
According to Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, “This collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. National service is a moral duty, its advocates claim, and the government should teach us that it is an integral part of American citizenship.
“Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state. It was Adolf Hitler, for example, who preached that ‘the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.’ And the proponents of ‘duty’ to the state, although they claim to be patriots, are espousing a view that is fundamentally un-American.
“American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the noton that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to the state.”
According to Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, “This collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. National service is a moral duty, its advocates claim, and the government should teach us that it is an integral part of American citizenship.
“Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state. It was Adolf Hitler, for example, who preached that ‘the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.’ And the proponents of ‘duty’ to the state, although they claim to be patriots, are espousing a view that is fundamentally un-American.
“American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the noton that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to the state.”
The Second American Revolution Has Begun
There is but one issue in this, the Second American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence declares the purpose for the independence - that each man has a right to his life, his liberty and his pursuit of happiness. Included in that is the right to his property. We own our own lives and the government does not own one second of them. Not One Second! And, I assert, this is the fight that is being clarified and will be had.
The only civil right, the one that people are more scared of than any other, the one that is regulated out of existence, is the freedom to use one's property as he sees fit. He reaps the benefits and the consequences accordingly. Economic freedom is the New Frontier for civil rights and the Second American Revolution is exactly this.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Tea Party Rules for Radicals
The Tea Parties are coming along - slowly getting to what is really at stake for our country. Thanks to Robert Villegas for his post - link below.
Freedom or slavery - that is the issue. This is the ultimate clash of political ideas. How do you want to live your life? Is it yours by right or does it belong to someone else? Do you want to live it in freedom, conducting it in the way you see fit or should your neighbors have a claim on your life. How much of a claim? As much as the government says they should have. All of the Obama programs are the pretext, the means, by which you will be chained to your neighbor.
If not here, where? If not now, when? America is freedom's final bastion. If Americans don't know the difference between freedom and slavery, who does? Which idea will win this titanic battle?
May freedom triumph. Is life worth living otherwise?
Tea Party Rules for Radicals
Freedom or slavery - that is the issue. This is the ultimate clash of political ideas. How do you want to live your life? Is it yours by right or does it belong to someone else? Do you want to live it in freedom, conducting it in the way you see fit or should your neighbors have a claim on your life. How much of a claim? As much as the government says they should have. All of the Obama programs are the pretext, the means, by which you will be chained to your neighbor.
If not here, where? If not now, when? America is freedom's final bastion. If Americans don't know the difference between freedom and slavery, who does? Which idea will win this titanic battle?
May freedom triumph. Is life worth living otherwise?
Tea Party Rules for Radicals
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