The American Principle 101

We now see that the top down politics that has come to a head in the Obama Administration is against human nature. Only the individual man knows what it takes to keep him looking forward to and wanting to take on life. (The moral is that which causes that desire in the individual human being. He must pursue happiness or his lust for life will die.) All orders and dictates from a top-down government chafe against that individual right. When it interferes too much, it must be changed as the Declaration of Independence makes clear.

The people of Vernon NJ are a beacon for what is possible and will need to take place all over this country. As it is learned in the incubators of liberty such as Vernon, so it shall grow into the full-fledged power of the possibility that only the United States has ever presented to mankind.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." -- Declaration of Independence, 1776

Our Incredibly Shrinking President

(Today I would like to register a rename for this article. It should read, "Our Incredibly Shrunken President." It's clear to me that Obama has never had a stature that he could shrink. He's been operating from the premises he's operating from now for a long, long time. He is stricken with the incredible facility to be Alinksy incarnate. I think he is a monster, my category for his character. Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)
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Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.

First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.

This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.

Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.

(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)

The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)

Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.

(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)

One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.

The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)

His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!

Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.

A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.

Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.

The Lost People of America

I remember reading Ayn Rand and hearing lots of questions as to whether a person should find a Galt's Gulch or create one to live in. There were a series of questions of this type which are related to this line of inquiry: "Should one accept Social Security or should one go to a government school or accept money from the government in any way?" Later Rand was glad that Alan Greenspan, one of her proteges, had the opportunity to curb inflation and buy time by becoming the head of the Federal Reserve Bank.

She always advocated living in the world and achieving values in the world. And she always advocated living and advocating the values required of a moral man in full possession of his own life force for the purpose of maintaining his life for his own happiness. But, there was a line one must never cross: One must never advocate for the programs that the government offers nor in any way become captured by them or the government to the point where he advocates, actively or passively, the collective at the expense of the individual. That was the sealing of one's fate, the collapse of one's moral fire. At that point one loses himself and his right to exist as an individual human life. He becomes a vegetable in spirit - living, but not alive.

In the case of Alan Greenspan, we see that he did cross that line.

One of the shocking and disheartening results of this past horrendous year is to realize that many of those close to you or that you have known have crossed that line. They have submerged themselves into the great collective, the home of non-existence of the individual. The grand irony is that they expect you to take them, an individual, seriously and listen to them as if their individual opinion should count when they have given up that ground. If we are all to be folded into the collective, the reason for that is to erase individuality. If you notice, at bottom, that is the sum total of the thing that all of the people who advocate this socialization want to get rid of.

image by ukyo_freak

These traits and effects come with the territory of individual and individualism.

Happiness: There is no collective happiness. Happiness as a concept will have to go out of existence. This is too bad because for some of you, it will pass from the cultural conversation before you discovered what it was and that it was actually a wondrous possibility.
Pursuing one's dreams: There are no collective dreams/ambitions. Those are individual.
Merit: Bad. After all, everyone in the collective must have self-esteem as a right and it is not something one earns.
Motivation: There is no collective motivation. There is only the sum of individuals' motivations. The collective has to get rid of motivation and replace it with fear - the fear of not looking good which amounts to always looking like one is part of, at least in some way, the group.
Prosperity: There is no collective prosperity. You may be prosperous and your neighbor may not be prosperous. It depends on what you do and how you do it. The collective is always trying to stamp that out and redistribute the wealth so that those difference don't invite envy and hatred.
Differences: Differences always imply individuals and in the collective, those are bad. In the collective there is always pressure to belong and not stand out. One cannot excel or achieve lest someone else may want to do that and therefore threaten the cohesion of the collective.
Love: Love is always individual. Not important in the collective. Love gets replaced with duty. "Of course we love our country. We must."
Attraction: Attraction is always individual. Again, not important unless it is attraction to an abstract idea like the State or the greater good or feminism or diversity or anything group oriented.
Values: Values are the possession and the motivation of the individual. No good. Only the group's so-called values are the ones you can espouse - whether you give a damn about them or not.
Trade: This form of peaceful activity is something that comes when individuals are ends in themselves. That's no longer true under collectivism. Everyone is a means for the collective's ends. Peace has no meaning under collectivism which depends on the dynamics of drama and turmoil to generate sufficient fear to drive people wherever the leaders want them to be.
Capitalism: This is what freedom for the individual is insofar as a political/economic system is concerned. It is based on individual rights. This definitely is out, replaced by socialism, which operates by pro-collective, anti-individual rules which means by regulations, taxes, permissions of a zillion kinds and is the diametric opposite of freedom.

All of those kinds of things are what must be forever denigrated and diminished, sometimes even stamped out by force, if a society of people as a collective is to be maintained. In the collective there is a constant drumbeat against these values and attributes which arise only in the evil-by-nature individuals. Hmmmm, sounds like the biblical "original sin" idea.

A few days ago I highlighted one drum banger: US Representative John Lewis. Entitlement is the watchword of the collectivist. If you buy that, then you have submerged yourself into the collective - or as Neal Boortz calls it, "the great unwashed."

I see John Lewis as a profoundly evil man. He calls for every individual to become a dependent. "He is entitled to healthcare," he says. "It is his by right." Of course, now it is healthcare, but in principle, he is saying that every man is entitled to all that others produce. He is trying to drive the future slaves into the pen under the guise of it being morally justified for him to eat the flesh of his neighbor.

This is always the way. No one looks at the other side of the hand - the side that has to provide the benefits that the government and politicians plan to disburse or the diminished lives of those trapped by the dependency. The other side is the dark and ugly slave side of the hand.

Somebody has to go "pick that cotton and tote that bale" and guess what? It is going to be YOU. And it is not going to be you because of what YOU want. It is going to be YOU because of what THEY want. You might get a few scraps from the table, but that is just to keep you unable to rise up and speak. Whatever you would say has to look dumb and really beside the point. They keep a close eye on how much of what they disburse it takes to maintain this oppression.

History has taught us everything we need to know about how this works. The great result of the The Great Society was entrapment of those who became dependent on it. Generally, it literally ruined their lives. Once sucked in, they were stuck in the goo and their lives became about manipulating the goo. "You mean I can get more money if I don't have a husband? Jettison his ass. You mean I can get more money if I have more children? Let me get some more of them then."

This is the basic principle of socialism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Having viable needs becomes the name of the game.

It was never intended to work. It cannot work. It is against the laws of nature, specifically man's nature. And so, there has never been a more evil system devised to enslave men than socialism. And right now if you are a liberal, you are a backer and a believer in the principle that generates this horror.

This is the drumbeat that is being sounded by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Jesse Jackson (notice how he uses race, another collective, to drive men into the pen), Al Sharpton and many, many more.

But the sharpest pain of this whole great division of mankind which is going on right now is when you see the people you love urging you and all those around you to go on into the pen. You see them submerging themselves into the great unwashed, losing their identify and their value except as another body that can work for the collective. "It's what you deserve," the lost people of America say. How can something be any sadder than that?

How have we come to this horrendous state of affairs in the lives of men? Why is it that the descendants of slaves are now advocating slavery? What is going on? Why is slavery suddenly, in 2009, looking to some like a good thing?

Slavery is the good? I never thought I would see the day. Talk about a disconnect. This is the greatest disconnect of human history. How can it happen that a country of free men, the richest country to have ever existed and able to provide a higher standard of living for all its people including its poor, suddenly throws itself back in time and into an abyss where there is no freedom? How is it possible that suddenly freedom looks like slavery and slavery looks like freedom? What is the cause of this greatest of all flip-flops?

Until this question gets answered, a Glenn Beck on every street corner will not be able to save us. It's as though we are zombies unable to respond and must go on into the pen. Why? How did we become so frozen, so deadened? How is it possible that the siren's call into the slave pen actually holds some allure?

This question shall be taken up in a future post.

image by Cotter158

Race, Politics and Glenn Beck

Today, Glenn Beck was awesome. He struck a note with me that needed striking. In fact I think that note needs to come from a gong hanging from a tall tree's limb to be heard throughout the country.

When Obama ran for office there were many concerns and ideas running through the culture. The two basic ones were political freedom/slavery and race.

I've always been a devotee of political freedom. It's the only thing about politics that I care about. All issues can be solved in those terms. Is the government increasing its hold over our lives or do we have the full measure of freedom that we need to live as human beings and that we ought to have? That is and always will be my question.

My relationships with my black friends has always been one of mutual respect and fun with some inspiration thrown in. Whenever there is a story about overcoming slavery and gaining freedom, I'm all in, often inspired and moved to tears.

I've always felt a common ground with blacks because of my anti-slavery, love-of-freedom values, but hearing Obama speak the strains of slavery in his messages of socialism, I wasn't so sure. When 95% of blacks voted for Obama, I was no longer sure what was going on. Did I have a common value of freedom with them or not?

No one said anything and my interracial relationships near me have gone quiet. Although I've communicated with blacks who I'm clear are solidly against socialist slavery and for political freedom, they are people I discover on the internet. I'm glad for these relationships, but they don't replace the friends I had.

Beck's program today pierced that desert of silence. I saw there a studio full of people who are Americans first and who are not afraid to speak against Obama and the Democrats as they seek to increase slavery and reduce freedom. I heard a number of them struggling with the hyphenated African-American designation. They are Americans first and they don't want some hyphenated name diminishing that. I heard them hating it that people in their culture deride knowledge and speaking good English.

I was left clear that we are into waters that we do not know how to navigate. And I was left clear that there are some courageous blacks willing to speak for the deep and enduring values of our larger, common American culture.

I was left heartened that the Democrat progressivism/socialism agenda lead by a black man is not sitting well with some of them. Given the results that government programs have had on their families and children, trapping them in ghettos of poverty and ignorance, they are not enticed by Obama's smooth words and Mr. Cool. They know bullshit when they see it.

Bottom-line I was left with that when it comes to ideas and discerning truth and value, there is no such thing as color. Beck's was the first post-racial program I've heard. I only wish Obama could lead as well.

I thank Glenn Beck today. It was an opening in what has seemed to me like a monolithic, impenetrable Obama-barrier.


Here are videos of the program. I got them from Fox News. He bills this as Part 1 of his series on black conservatives. What I hear is a series on black people who have different views and can speak out. I didn't parse their words for whether they were strictly conservative or not, whether they stayed on or went off the tracks.

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3