JUDGMENT - The Missing Moral Principle

Who is the Ragnar Danneskjold* of our time? Who is calling the destroyers of value to account?

We live in a time of a giant sucking sound. The WEST is flushing itself down the toilet.

Why? It cannot pronounce moral judgment. When I say "it," I mean that the culture is in such a weakened state that a strong pronouncement of moral judgment to true matters up would be shouted down as unseemly. Given this state, the strong pronouncement will have to be yelled through a din of naysayers. Someone will hear it anyway. I promise you, I will hear it if it can be heard.

I dedicate this piece to Bosch Fawstin. He's fearless, especially in his fingering the contradictions and inhumanity of the Muslims, and I love him for that. I really liked his entry into the Twin Towers Goes Global contest. Maybe now they can get why people don't want the Ground Zero Mosque.

Along this line, I've been thinking of all the "brands" that are being diminished because the people who speak for and work to enhance those brands will not pronounce moral judgment against Obama who, highly associated with them, is taking them down with him.

Here's some: Democrats, Harvard, Columbia, Chicago, Illinois, Oprah, Unions, Blacks in general, and the USA. (The only one I care about supporting is the USA. The rest will have to earn my respect one man or institution at a time.)

Wouldn't it be something if a leader from Harvard came forward and said that he now sees, with Obama as its currently most famous product, the enormous cost of Affirmative Action? OR wouldn't if be astounding if a black leader came forward and said that it's time for blacks to stop acting like a "pack" that "goes along to get along" and call Obama to account for all of his violations of human freedom, the most precious of conditions for the people who knew and tell the stories of slavery? Wouldn't it be amazing if a Democrat denounced Obama for enacting policies destroying the economy stating that it is time to call him to account regardless that he is black? Or gosh, wouldn't it be something if someone would stand up for America and apologize to "the best within us" for "forgetting who we are," by letting Obama, our President, besmirch the ideal that quickens the beat of the human heart around the globe?

All of us are going to pay dearly for "going along" with Obama - the Con. Every brand associated with Obama will pay. Oprah has never been held as high as she was before she endorsed Obama. (It's interesting about Oprah. People loved her and were always talking about her when her program was geared to all people. Who is she now that Obama favors blacks over whites in instance after instance and she says nothing? Swiss cheese?)

Harvard and Columbia are being drug through the streets insofar as providing a solid education for real values. They are gaining the reputation of being an intellectual hot house that doesn't know what goes on in the real world.

Chicago and Illinois have been corrupt for a long time, but now they have taken on a real and dangerous quality that they didn't have before. Why? Obama thrived there.

America granted grace, which I don't think has been an entirely good thing since freedom is its own reward, to blacks because their ancestors were slaves. That's over. I called the grocery clerk to account where before I would have let her slide.

The thing that is so clearly missing in the public arena of our era is judgment. No one will pronounce it. No one will take action for a proper standard. No one in Congress is making a dent on the corruption that is overtaking our government. It is simply missing.

In the ever-present choice of wings or spine, we've chosen wings.

36"w x 24"h acrylic on canvas, 2004

Where is the spine. It doesn't exist in this soupy, slurpy world of words. Just words - words that mean nothing except to have you think they do. For every statement coming out of Obama's mouth, we have a video or audio clip of him saying the opposite. Insanity reigns. Obama, the Con, spins more words tonight in his Jobs Speech. Words, just words. Except they are costing us not only our treasure, but our moral vitality.

Obama may paint a socialist utopia, but we all know that it shall not happen. Never has, never will. Why would it? No one gives a damn. And, no one does because the government won't allow it. Who can care when you are regulated from morning 'til night and this plague is spreading faster than we can get rid of it?

All will stop when someone with a voice that can be heard pronounces moral judgment - the judgment that gives one's moral vitality a bracing jolt!**

Who among us possesses THE VOICE THAT CAN BE HEARD? That is who we are waiting for.

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*Ragnar Danneskjold is a character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. He was a pirate for justice. He calculated the amount a businessmen deserved from his production and trade, because he earned by trading value for value. Then he would attack ships which the government used to transfer wealth from America to People's States around the globe. (Sound like Obama?) When he got the wealth on board, he took it to a place where it was held in account for the producer of it. It became available to him when he chose to take his power back, go on strike and renounce being a sacrificial lamb.

**Ayn Rand is the only one in my lifetime that has done this. And she did it the hard way. She earned it.

Liberty's Vision

Liberty's vision affirms the only proper role of government: to protect the Individual Rights of all citizens at the expense of none; to protect its citizenry from force, fraud, and breach of contract, thereby allowing all citizens to dispose of the products of their thoughts and labor, their property, as they see fit.

Liberty's vision defines the only proper way to associate with our fellow men: by voluntary trade and the prohibition of force. Free trade and free markets are both practical and morally necessary for human dignity, prosperity, and enjoyment of life on earth.

Liberty's vision rejects the premise that one person's alleged need constitutes an enforceable claim on another's life, and that such a claim can or should be fulfilled through government force or coercion. We reject slavery in all forms, including coercive wealth redistribution.

Liberty's vision rejects the premise of politicians and bureaucrats who assume the right to subject us to their schemes and controls, to force us into servitude to them and to their cronies, to take our hard-earned wages, to disrupt our economy and burden us with unconscionable liabilities, and to sacrifice our beloved soldiers and our resources in wars where our national interest is dubious, and where winning is prohibited.

This is Liberty's Vision. Is it America's? Is it yours?

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"Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair." - George Washington.

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(If this was penned by someone other than me and you can prove it, I would love to give that person credit. I was sent this by a friend who had gotten it from me. He gives me credit for it and it sounds like something I may have written, but I'm not fully confident that I did. No matter, I publish it because it is important today as we sort out who we are as a nation.)

Viva Political Salsa

Here! I am looking forward to a song about freeing America. We're a long way from being free here. We've backed our butts into slavery big time.

The Fear-based Government

Never have I seen such a fear-based Administration and government. The US Government has truly become public enemy #1. Give a man motivated by fear a gun and trouble is likely to ensue. The fact that the government is the final authority and possesses and uses guns as its ultimate and distinguishing characteristic, means that we are in big trouble.

Anyone who understands freedom and the abundance it provides for all those who participate must realize that we are on a path which is 180 degrees from that course. We have gotten a man and wife in the White House which have a score to settle. That score is based in hatred and hatred is based on fear. Instead of seeing an expansion of freedom such that we all can continue to learn what life requires and which nourishes us, we are seeing rules and regulations on everything. Instead of men welcoming disagreement in order to learn more about how life works and what is true, this Administration is refusing to talk to or about anyone who disagrees with them. This, I assert, implies massive fear.

It's funny to watch Obama pretend that Fox News, e.g., is not even a news organization. This guy is massively out of touch with reality. Further he is counting on the dumbbells of this country to give him the approval he needs. No one who is interested in life and living a good life can afford to live this way. Obama thinks he can. Hmmm. Is he that stupid? I don't think he is innately stupid. I do think, rather, that fear will make one stupid. Fear of people asking questions and perhaps doubting that he is really The One must be terrifying.

Clearly we are in a battle: Freedom vs. Tyranny. Barack Obama is the first snake oil salesman of the 21st century. He has the pleasant manner and the "sweet" family that keep a lot of people lulled into an "everything will be ok" state of mind.

Believe me, it is not OK and it will not turn out well. And at the rate that things are happening, it will not take long for the consequences of this horrendous, people-fearing, Democratically controlled government to become apparent.

The wealthy people may be able to get out of the country and not be controlled by this tyranny. But for the middle class and the underclass, this promises to be one huge concentration camp, border to border.

Sounds horrendous, doesn't it? If you show me one fact, one marker, that the direction of this government is any way other than toward tyranny, I would like to see it or hear it. I assert that the people who are still believing that this Administration is acting in their interests are asleep - deeply asleep. They are deeply invested in not rocking any boats. They hate conflict and argumentation, even disgruntlement. Their wallpaper patterns consist of babies, kittens and puppies. Or, as Rand once said, their lives "are about baby blankets and hams." They would rather ride blithely in a boat headed for the falls than jump overboard and, even though difficult, work to get to a solid bank.

The solid bank IS one's knowledge of how the world works. Not how one hopes it will work. Not how one prays it will turn out. I mean how the world works. It means being grounded in how human being operates, what political freedom is and why it is important that the political system be consistent with the possibility of human being, not the control of human being. (If you think that control of human being is the way of the future, you need to get your ass on a psychologist's couch to see if you can discover why you think that.) One must have, one way or the other, the philosophical/moral basis for the requirements for a society such that a man can freely live in it. And during these trying times, that knowledge cannot be implicit. It must be conscious and explicit. Otherwise, you don't really know and know that you. Without that, one is destined to drift, float and go over the falls. Without that there can be no access to the will to speak out, to resist and finally take the action which can, if successful, save yours and your loved ones' lives.

Do you think this is a dire message? Your god-damned right this is a dire message. Do you think I'm typing this up because I want to be ostracized as a pariah? No, I'm not. I am saying this because I'm a canary in the coal mine. I understand these things. The value of freedom and the morality that works for freedom has been something which was awakened by my father when I was a kid. I could see that he cared about such things and got disgusted when people didn't act according to the principles which honored people in their rights and as a person. He could get morally outraged at injustice. I liked that. I admired that. I became that.

I know what freedom is. I am very aware of it vs. when it is not present or being threatened to be taken away. I worked for 40 years to increase the distinctions I have around this topic. I am not one who is going to blithely slip into a life where those distinctions are missing. It's not me.

If you lived on a desert island, you would be free because there would be no one else on the island. A free country, a political system whose value and organization is for freedom, is living as free in society as one is free on a desert island. In a free society, people recognize and honor the right of every person to live his life. Nothing impinges upon him other than the principle by which he chooses to live which is, to honor the right of every man, woman and child which includes him, to be free of everyone else. He can do anything he wants except initiate force against another person or his property. A free man can interact with any other man so long as he can obtain the agreement of that person for such action. A lot of this is in the unsaid that governs society, but really it's quite simple.

But now, people are primarily scared. The big motivator is fear. The blacks have been buying the victim conversation for decades and that is a fear-based conversation. Many women and gays have been generating a fear-based conversation too. With all education controlled by the government, we are now realizing that our children have no knowledge of core values. Consequently anytime their actions are threatened or something isn't magically on the table before them, they have no interior to which to repair. All they have is fear - and then the sob stories.

So we have many millions of people who are hanging onto Obama as some kind of hope. Hope for what? Their good feeling won't be interrupted? Crumbs and chump change? What exactly? That their race will have some power and won't be a barrier for them? What is it? I don't see that hope.

We know that government health care will produce a poverty of health services and care. If that comes to pass, right now we are on the mountain top insofar as the kinds of health care that an average person can obtain. The wealth of health care that we now have will be going the way of the vinyl record. Fear shrinks life. Love expands it. Tyranny and fear go together. Freedom and love go together. Tyranny and poverty go together. Freedom and wealth go together.

American freedom and wealth is about to end. It has been easy for a middle class person to live well in the United States. Eighteen months ago, I was commenting on this very fact. That is ending and it is soon going to be hard. A year from now, that will be apparent to more people although I have to admit that I am experiencing it now.

Architecture, especially so for my small business, is one of the first things to be affected by the larger economic picture. I can tell you with certainty that nothing is happening. One thing that is happening is that people who have wanted to build are still wanting to build. As this drags out, they look for the slightest clue that it would be good to move forward. So if there is any easing, I expect it to be a boom, at least for a short period of time. It could be that in 2 to 3 months I may be working as much as I can physically work.

With the kinds of things going on with the government now, I will have to have everything be put in a form that can have some power in the dry period that will inevitably follow. Damn it, I wanted a flat screen TV. That, however, may not be the thing to be buying. I don't want to be one of those dunderheads that go with the flow and wake up one day shocked within an inch of my life. I know that experience. Not good. This clearly is going to take some thought.

We are in and heading for the eye of a fear-based hurricane. Do what you can to stop it. I think stopping the government from instituting government health care, a bureaucrat who is designated to sit between your mind and your body, would put an enormous crimp in the Democrats' push for total power. I think Government Health Care means that the government, not you, owns your life. It means that you do not possess the right to your life for the simple reason that you will be unable to act in your own interest when it comes to your body. You will get the chump change. The choices that would have been possible under freedom won't be. Simple as that. Only the government's interest will matter in that world.

The Cap and Trade bill definitely needs to be defeated. That will tax you unto death. Thousands of dollars in higher prices caused by the government's tax on energy will change your life. Man's role in the climate is not understood. Frankly, I don't think it amounts to much in the face of the enormous forces of a much larger system in which we and our planet lives. Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a scenario that will place the earth in a much larger context than the global "warmist," "climate changers" have. I think Al Gore is an idiot. He's a person whose purpose is to accumulate wealth via political means.

The five primary arguments I have against the global "warmist" positions are these: 1) The science is not there. Al Gore and the desperate global warmists are not careful about the facts and they are only interested in pushing people to a conclusion that will get them the control they want. I saw An Inconvenient Truth and I was appalled at how disrespectful it was to a thinking person. It was really not about the earth at all. It was about getting the audience to like Al Gore. (Now isn't that an interesting motivation for a politician? Oh my, I should be surprised. Sounds like someone else I know.)

2) Environmentalists lie - boldly and outrageously. They lie about polar bears, for one thing. They also lie about a lot of other things. Many of these lies have been documented. They are not about the Environment. They are about religion. This is not the first time in history that the earth and nature has become the touchstone of a religion. People live on the earth and need the earth as a resource to maintain their lives. But, their lives are not to be sacrificed for the earth or nature. That would turn the whole way things work upside down. But this is the way an Environmentalist thinks. He would rather save a 2" fish than provide food for people. Something wrong here. When I see him be the first to lay down his life for a fish, he will have some credibility. Until then? No.

Another very interesting fact is that private property owners take care of the environment much better than government ever has or will. One of the reasons is that government, as it now operates, is set up on a double standard. Everything you cannot do, they can. I've read articles about tree farms and such and the private farms are far better than the government owned lands. People generally love their property and they do not go around with the intent to harm it. Also, property is an investment and it works to maintain its value. On the other hand, the government could care less. It is oriented toward power and political spoils, not real life and real property. (Of course if you organize a march on Washington with a million or more people, you might get their attention to do something. Not necessarily though.) The great devastation of land is in the public lands. Since no one owns it, the thing to do is get as much as one can while he has the access. Or to pass a law such that it cannot respond to the natural laws that govern it. There is no future that one is worried about. The future for someone with access to public lands is far more dependent on one's ass-kissing ability than one's nature-caring ability.

3) Resources never go out of existence. They are always in a process of transformation of their form. Today's trash is a potential resource tomorrow. (Actually it is a resource right now, but until we have worked out how to use it, it is in a latent form.) E = m times c squared. Energy and mass are intimately related. One transforms into the other. As we are better able to control this process, we will be able to make these transformations ourselves. There is no need to be "spiritually" worried that we are going to run out of resources. Not possible.

I think that eventually all the manufacturing may be located on other planets and asteroids. Earth, where we live, will be a country club.

4) Pollution is not something that is necessarily damaging. In a free society, pollution becomes a problem if it damages someone's property - their body or their farm, if you get my point. No one gets to dump their weekly trash on my side of the fence, the property line. If I think that factory X is polluting my property, all I have to do is show that to be true. I do that by discovering the facts that show that. Until one has discovered those facts, there is no evidence that Factory X is polluting my property. (In today's world, people try everything but the facts to get people to stop doing something. The tools are sob stories, social pressure and unearned guilt. That's the tools we now use. Nasty tools. They don't work and we don't learn anything about how things work except how to better use those tools which makes our social world an increasingly nasty place to live. Not good.)

5) The free market responds to change the fastest of any human invention ever. It is constantly changing and the entrepreneur is always on the lookout for how better to meet the needs and wants of potential consumers. If the climate changes, the last thing we need are rigid laws decided by a bunch of politicians sitting in Washington or State Capitols trying to figure out how to change the laws so they and their backers can make a buck. This is corrupt. The free market, if free, will handle the changes we are always dealing with and seeking to provide for and it will do it magnificently and quickly. That is inherent in its nature. Nothing to fear. It is imperative to separate economy and state.

There are many areas to fight the current government. The control of speech is one area. Net neutrality is an attempt to place the internet under government control rendering it unable to respond to what people want. Obama's czars have various plans for controlling talk radio, disagreeable cable channels, etc., etc. All of this is very bad for us because it makes it much harder for us to get information and adjust our view of the world as we need to do for our survival.

Do what you can to prepare. The very best thing you can do is school yourself as to why fear doesn't work and you should give it up. I'm 69 years old and I would give up Medicare in a nanosecond for a free market in health care. I guarantee you I would be far more likely to get the health care I need if the market is free. Government control of health care will, if it comes about, strangle health care. If government saw to it that freedom increased, there would be nurses in drug stores and grocery stores taking care of most of the basic questions we have about health care. Health care would be abundant. Instead, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company trot out some sob story (what I call sore picking) which they think is sufficient reason to put the noose around the nation's neck. What a Carnival of Arrogant Asses we have in Washington.

Have We Ever Seen Such A War Against Reality?

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?

Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?

By Yaron Brook

Government intervention in medicine is wrecking American health care. Nearly half of all spending on health care in America is already government spending. Yet President Obama's "reforms" will only expand that intervention.

Prior to the government's entrance into medicine, health care was regarded as a product to be traded voluntarily on a free market--no different from food, clothing, or any other important good or service. Medical providers competed to provide the best quality services at the lowest possible prices. Virtually all Americans could afford basic health care, while those few who could not were able to rely on abundant private charity.

Had this freedom been allowed to endure, Americans' rising productivity would have afforded them better and better health care, just as, today, we buy better and more varied food and clothing than people did a century ago. There would be no crisis of affordability, as there isn't for food or clothing.

But by the time Medicare and Medicaid were enacted in 1965, this view of health care as an economic product--for which each individual must assume responsibility--had given way to a view of health care as a "right," an unearned "entitlement," to be provided at others' expense.

This entitlement mentality fueled the rise of our current third-party-payer system, a blend of government programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid, together with government-controlled employer-based health insurance (itself spawned by perverse tax incentives during the wage and price controls of World War II).

The resulting system aimed to relieve the individual of the "burden" of paying for his own health care by coercively imposing its costs on his neighbors. Today, for every dollar's worth of hospital care a patient consumes, that patient pays only about 3 cents out of pocket; the rest is paid by third-party coverage. And for the health care system as a whole, patients pay only about 14 percent.

Shifting the responsibility for health care costs away from the individuals who accrue them led to an explosion in spending. In a system in which someone else is footing the bill, consumers, encouraged to regard health care as a "right," demand medical services without having to consider their real price. When, through the 1970s and 1980s, this artificially inflated consumer demand sent expenditures soaring out of control, the government cracked down by enacting further coercive measures: price controls on medical services, cuts to medical benefits, and a crushing burden of regulations on every aspect of the health care system.

As each new intervention further distorted the health care market, driving up costs and lowering quality, belligerent voices demanded still further interventions to preserve the "right" to health care: from regulations mandating various forms of insurance coverage to Bush’s massive prescription drug bill.

The solution to this ongoing crisis is to recognize that the very idea of a "right" to health care is a perversion. There can be no such thing as a "right" to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services. Rights, as the Founders conceived them, are not claims to economic goods, but to freedoms of action.

You are free to see a doctor and pay him for his services--no one may forcibly prevent you from doing so. But you do not have a "right" to force the doctor to treat you without charge or to force others to pay for your treatment. The rights of some cannot require the coercion and sacrifice of others.

Real and lasting solutions to our health care problems require a rejection of the entitlement mentality in favor of a proper conception of rights. This would provide the moral basis for breaking the regulatory chains stifling the medical industry; for lifting the tax and regulatory incentives fueling our dysfunctional, employer-based insurance system; for inaugurating a gradual phase-out of all government health care programs, especially Medicare and Medicaid; and for restoring a true free market in medical care.

Such sweeping reforms would unleash the power of capitalism in the medical industry. They would provide the freedom for entrepreneurs motivated by profit to compete with each other to offer the best quality medical services at the lowest prices, driving innovation and bringing affordable medical care, once again, into the reach of all Americans.

Yaron Brook is the executive director of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights in Washington, D.C. ARC is a division of the Ayn Rand Institute and promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand--author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

Freedom: Our Protector

Something unfamiliar has descended on this nation. As Americans, it is a feeling we have never known. It is a fear of men.

Never has there been such an assault on people - as human beings - as we are experiencing now. The assault is coming from all sides at once. Every day there is a new assault.

The personification of this massive assault is President Obama. Behind him are all the men who seek new powers over us, who seek to force or profit from the force of our every action. Government men are leading the way. Businessmen and dependents of all kinds who want to use or have what they are handing out are standing in line to work with them. Whether by outright directive as in the forcing of banks to take government money; government orders and intrusions into their very hiring, firing and pay; stripping people of their lawful contracts, i.e., assets, and the risks and benefits associated with those contracts; or by telling you, directly or indirectly through taxation, what you can take into your body, be it nicotine or nourishment - everywhere, we live under the threat of moral directive and compulsion.

President Obama is working overtime to undermine every working relationship we have. He tells us that our doctors prescribe unneeded surgeries (I'm sure there are A FEW unscrupulous ones that do.) and prescribe the more expensive pills (Red or blue, I can't remember which.). He tells us to fear the cops when they come to our aid. He tells us that he knows or his young appointee knows how to run a car company. He does not stand up for people seeking freedom in foreign lands but instead plays buddy-buddy with the world's bloody-handed dictators. He forsakes our allies for the world's criminals. He wants to stunt our industry with pernicious and penalizing taxes on energy. He knows what people, especially cops, are thinking (and it's not good) even if they are not.

He seeks to turn black against white, customer against businessman, patient against doctor, investor against Wall Street, worker against management, citizen against cop, and government against the people.

There is one battle he will not allow - us against the government. But that one is coming whether he likes it or not.

And now he wants to be our doctor, our surgeon, and our nurse? On those days when we may be sick or hurting, we are going to be told to wait in line for weeks or months to get the attention and care we need and want, to perhaps save our lives. You will no longer be a patient. You will be a ward. As we see in Canada, a dog has better health care. The same will be true here unless Obama nationalizes animal care too.

If you want to see what your health care will be like under Obamacare, remember how he told you to save gas? That's right, blow up your tires. This past week when asked if an old woman with arrhythmia who has a good spirit should get a pacemaker, he suggested a painkiller. Jeez.

And if this weren't bad enough, he appoints czars with wild ideas such as "population needs to be controlled" if the earth is to live, and animals have rights and can sue humans. I didn't know they could speak, let alone read and write. Is it no wonder we are scared out of our wits?

Add to this his ingenuously telling us that when the government takes over health care, we will save money and the country will be running right once more, that no one will lose the health care they now have and that we will be as free as we have always been to conduct our lives. This we are to believe in the face of the fact that the government has run its health care programs into the ground and that all government health care plans the world over suffer from shortages and must ration their treatments and their time. Is it no wonder doctors and surgeons run from these Animal Farms?

Further he has gone abroad and apologized wholesale for America. Never has he said a good thing about us. When he mouths what America has stood for, it is obvious he lies insofar as his believing that it ever was a good thing. He wants positive rights, he says, knowing full well that he must enslave someone to provide them.

Obama doesn't know what it is to be an equal. Either he's on top or he's making sure he's lower than the king. Meet a man as an equal? Who ever heard of that? This is Obama's problem.

Government's hand is a dead hand - no vitality there - only laws, rules and regulations. You dutifully follow them, or else. Used correctly they support human life. Used as Obama wants to use them, they deaden and destroy it.

So far he has not be able to get us to march in lockstep, but he has his plans for that too: the Obama corps in the form of AmeriCorps. Already set up and being further formulated in the background, he wants to give students money to go to college. For that they will pay with X years of their lives in his corps. He says he wants this as well funded as America's military. Does anyone doubt that this will be an indoctrination machine? By all means, increase the deadness!

We are starting to get in spades that Freedom is Our Protector, and Obama is an enemy of freedom. By our minds and our choices, we sort the good from the bad - the good doctors from the bad doctors, the good teachers from the bad teachers, the good bankers from the bad bankers, the good businesses from the bad businesses, the good friends from the bad "friends" - you name it. Obama says that's bad. He wants to limit choices - outlaw them. Nowhere is this more obvious nor fundamentally destructive than in Government Health Care.

As an American, I have the right to my life, my liberty and my pursuit of happiness. I pursue my happiness by taking the property I own, starting with my own life - body and mind - and developing it and building it to provide for what I need. Seeking values is the essence of being alive. Political freedom is my only requirement.

Other Americans are not my enemies as Obama paints them - neither the doctors, the bankers, the car makers, the cops, the news organizations, the factory owners, the investors, the rich or the poor. All are available to talk to and work with if I need them and they provide what I need. They are the people I seek to meet and learn about so I may be able to satisfy my needs. Obama, on the other hand has turned the poor and the rich and the fat into parasites, the doctors and the bankers into predators and industry into plunderers. All are scapegoats. We are supposed to hate them. They are bad. Obama is no friend of America.

He's no friend of people anywhere. Although his outstretched hand may hold candy, his hidden hand holds a club.

Freedom is MY friend and protector.

The Killer Wedge

At the Moment of Vulnerability

Right now, this Obama Administration is working overtime to pass Government Health Care. What it seeks to do is become the health provider for the nation. What this means is:

YOU CANNOT FIRE YOUR DOCTOR.

You cannot choose your doctor, except for superficial characteristics; you can go nowhere except to government clinics and health facilities. This is the end of you as an independent human being - and right at the moment when you need to have safeguarded your independence the most - when you are the most vulnerable. This is what Government Health Care means.

Only one other time has this country engaged in this kind of activity. That was the institution of slavery. A slave could not fire his employer. He could not go elsewhere to find a place to work.

Above all else, this is the principle that MUST NOT get refastened onto the American people.

And it is not just you the citizen that is the slave. So long as a human being wants to practice in any aspect of the medical industry, (doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmacists, drug developers and producers, alternate forms of health care provision, emergency crews) he must work for the government or leave the country. Otherwise, he must leave this industry. Ultimately these are his only choices under Government Health Care. Runarounds and a black market will be against the law.

This is as evil as anyone can get when it comes to social life for human beings. This is a moral issue and nothing more.

Notice how many people are talking about the best way to create the program and how much it will cost as if the basic premise of slavery is quite all right. No one is talking about the basic issue. Even those who should know better than anyone what slavery is - and I am talking about the American black in particular - are looking at the "candy" in the hand of the politician rather than the club behind his back.

These men offering this "candy" are Barack Obama and all of his Administration, Nancy Pelosi, Teddy Kennedy, and a host of other politicians - liberal and conservative. It also includes corporations and their lobbyists who are trying to get in early on the game to provide the products that the government will need in its programs. They all need to be fought. The very idea of human bondage must be fought root and branch.

Obama has a Science Czar, John Holdren, who is on record with some very draconian methods of population control, wanting to reduce it to below replacement levels and advocating sterilizing men as the means. He has a Regulatory Czar, Cass Sunstein, who believes in "Nudging" people into the right behavior via taxation.

I'm telling you, this is no different than the Progressives of the past. Their mission has always been to "improve" society by force. In the early 1900's, eugenics was their call as the means to this end. (The wildest of that advocacy was Nazi Germany.) Now it is what is called "nudging" - a program of taxation that discourages particular behaviors and fosters others. They think they can use FORCE, the law with taxes, fines and prison in the background, with a smile on their face and righteousness in their heart.

They are wrong. To force a "choice" is to obviate man's possession of volition - the capacity to choose. This negates his humanity at the root. No longer is he able to pursue values, reap the consequences and correct or continue his course of action. Good and bad no longer apply to one forced. Since he had to do it, all he can provide are excuses. He's powerless. Force misapplied by anyone, but above all the institution of government is a primary cause of social deterioration. It negates the mind and the pursuit of values. It kills human life.

I offer Government Education as a prime example. Compelling students to learn is not the same thing as showing that learning is a value to be pursued. Force and enrollment, the presentation of a possibility and its value so one can choose it or not, are opposites. Anyone who wants learning via enrollment, as opposed to indoctrination, has to provide it himself.

As an architect, I know what force is. Before Handicap Access became the law of the land and when I was in architecture school, books on handicap access were everywhere. If one had a client who wanted handicap access, one learned how to best provide it. There were many possibilities and there was much competition regarding solutions to various problems.

Once Handicap Access became law, the building code reduced all of this to a single section with rules and layouts. The investigation and search for better means not only for access but for handicap mobility largely ended.

When handicap access was just beginning, I had a doctor client who had need for it in his office. This was a remodel project and there was a bathroom present. The question arose as to whether a handicapped person could use the bathroom. I rented a wheelchair and investigated the matter for myself. I then took the results of my study and my solution to the building department and they were quite happy to approve it given that I actually knew how it was going to work.

Today that is impossible. Now with the rigid codification of everything regarding Handicap Access, it is way too costly to go after a better solution. Who wants get a variance with all that entails and/or go before a board to fight for something that may not be approved even if it works. Better to just do what the code says and be done with it. As a consequence, we see the repetition of the same plans over and over.

Further, rather than business who want to appeal to the handicapped offering the benefits of their facilities as an attraction for customers that they want and appreciate, all business and public buildings must provide the access whether they will ever need it. This results in a huge expense where not needed and deprives the business who welcome the handicapped to show that they welcome them. All of this is how society becomes gutted of its differentiation, values, and even beauty and charm. So much for the government and its influence.

Needless to say all of the innovation regarding handicap access has dried up. It doesn't exist. There is no longer any excitement around the subject.

And this is exactly where Government Health Care is headed but with a far worse aspect. You will be the government's slave unable to exercise your own mind and your own free will, the two fundamental aspects of remaining fully human. And this relative to the most personal aspect of yourself - your body.

One further note. Already, we are seeing the inhumanity in which the government will indulge itself to effect its programs. Here is an article entitled, Tough Love for Fat People. Because our society is unwilling to allow people to experience the consequences of their actions, most Washington voices think there is no choice but to coerce their behavior. The new scapegoats are going to be fat people - and, of course, smokers. Where are the articles on drug users, alcohol drinkers, and all the other things that people use to excess? What about those who binge on sugar? Or those who eat only protein? Or those who exercise to the point of hurting their bodies? You name it. Is this the direction you want society to head?

If not, you had better get on your high horse and soapbox. Government Health Care is the killer wedge on this matter.

Doesn't sound like a group of people I want to live around. See my previous post.

Euthanasia by Default

A Government Health Care system means that everyone is paid for, seen and treated by the government. In such a system, there may be many different doctors, clinics and hospitals, but at bottom there is only one customer - the government. Ultimately it is the government's tune to which all dance.

Since health care is supposedly free, people will not choose whether they want to go to the doctor based on any number of reasons, one of which is cost. They will take advantage of the benefits since they are there to be used. With no apparent cost to them over which they have control, why not?

But nothing man must do to maintain his life is without cost. It is an enormous fantasy to think otherwise. Because in a nation the size of the United States there is infinite demand for these benefits, the government will soon see that the expenses far outrun their tax revenues. They will have no choice but to raise taxes and/or cut benefits.

Raising taxes has its limits. Taxes on the populace cut into their standard of living. As taxes rise and the standard of living lowers, people carp and complain. The health care people take the brunt of this because they are the leading edge of Government Health Care. But they will have their excuses. After all, they are not ultimately responsible. (With Government Health Care the health care people will suffer a huge loss of good will and trust from people. Who can trust someone who is ultimately powerless in the matter and is not hired by your own judgment?)

The Government will then be attacked. The rising cost of living will prevent the Government from calling for more taxes. They will try to hide them in everything, but to hold down taxes, they will cut benefits. There will always be those who say that all the waiting, forestalling, shoddy methods and reduced benefits are worth it. They will be wrong. It doesn't have to be this way.

As the benefits are downsized, it must come out of someone's hide. There must be priorities. Of course it only makes sense to favor the productive taxpayers over the unproductive tax users. And the latter are the handicapped, the mentally incapacitated, the elderly, to name a few obvious categories of people. They will be left to die. Not in so many words, of course. Maybe they will be given some palliatives, but nothing that can really make a difference and cost the system money it doesn't have. Call this euthanasia. This is what it is - by default.

Actually euthanasia means a gentle and easy death. But some of the suffering will not be eased. "I'm so sorry. That's just the way it is," they say, and besides, that costs money too.

The real crime is that it doesn't have to be this way. Just recently drug stores wanted to bring in nurses and medical practitioners of various kinds to look at people who needed some medical advice. Given their knowledge they could help those they could and if not, recommend to them someone with more advanced knowledge. This idea, a product of economic freedom, was fought tooth and nail by the doctors. They don't want the competition.

Of course the doctors went to the law makers. "Outlaw such a solution," they said. The problem is that the law makers should not have the right to limit competition and new ideas. Their job is to catch criminals who violate authentic rights, not the false "economic rights." This is where the current mess of the health system goes off the track. Instead of freeing people to come up with new ideas on how to deliver health care, they kill it. As a result they indirectly kill people.

I got an email letter this morning from John Lewis, my Congressional Representative. He says, "I believe health care is a right." He presents no argument. He just believes it. In the wacko ethics of our culture, he sounds like a good man. But he is not.

Nothing can be a right that has to be produced by some other men. What is Mr. Lewis going to do? Take their labor and their property and give it to you? In days past, the plantation owners did the same thing except they were honest. They had slaves for their purposes. Now we have "The Great Pretenders" who enslave others for your purposes, they say. John Lewis is one of "The Great Pretenders."

Slavery is the darkest, most evil kind of advocacy and John Lewis is advocating it. A is A no matter how you dress it.

What is the antidote to the great problem of health care? Freedom. Freedom to think, to come up with new ideas for treatment and care, and freedom to deliver goods and services to people - those willing to trade something for them.

Freedom! Let it ring! From the Stone Mountain of Georgia to the foothills of Santa Barbara.

Some say, "We have to do something about this health care mess." That's true. But let's get to the cause of the problem and not rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are in this mess because the industry is tied in a knot. Government regulation and control is ubiquitous. Free it. Let our people go.

The other reason we have this mess is because people like John Lewis are telling people that health care is a right. He has to poke out his own eyes to not see the slavery in this.

People want to solve these problems. Being bound hand and foot they only have narrow avenues for action. Slave masters are hounding them.

Government is not the answer. It is the problem. Some of you will lose your loved ones because euthanasia will be its result. Death is final.

Nothing was more graphic than a piece I saw on TV. In Canada the medical industry is government run. A human has to wait at least a month for an MRI no matter what his ailment. It could be serious and need quick attention or not. In Canada, on the other hand, veterinary medicine is practiced in a free market. An animal can get an MRI the next day.

Wake up!

The Coming Leadership Vacuum

I think Obama has just about worn out his rhetoric.

The things he is willing to say about how great universal health care is going to be, how it won't cost us anything, how it will save our economy, on and on, is over the top - WAY over the top. I can no longer listen to him without involuntary yelling BULLLL SHIT! There is simply no way he can have what he says come true except at a tremendous cost to America and to his authority in every way other than "he got it done" - if he does.

The cost will be in the results. The relationship with your doctor will be gone. The costs of health care will skyrocket because when it is free there are no brakes on its use. And with that, the clampdown necessarily will descend upon us. How that will look, I don't know. I just know that the quality we now have will decrease, and decrease, and decrease. Of course, those politicians got to get paid - they and their bedfellows. That part will increase. The best and the brightest in that industry will do something else more rewarding than being under the gun of an Emergency Room pace every day for the rest of their lives and not get paid enough in money or respect and appreciation.

Maybe that decreased quality will look like the English where they don't use anesthesia for dental work. Or maybe it will look like the Canadians where you have to wait at least a month for an MRI that may make the difference between living and dying. And if that isn't enough to gall you, your pet can get an MRI the next day because freedom and competition reign in pet health care. One thing that will happen is that old people will be flushed. They are not the productive ones doing most of the paying for the system. And speaking of paying, the wealthy will have moved their wealth elsewhere so it cannot be taxed and insofar as America is concerned, they will have gone Galt or maybe just "gone fishin'."

And health care is just a piece of it. Where are Obama's triumphs in foreign policy? Isn't democracy, the term he does use, meaningless unless people are free? Where was he when the dissidents of Iran were putting their lives at stake for freedom? Oh, I know, not meddling while desiring to shake the bloody hands of their dictators in what he hopes will be some agreement about nuclear weapons. Am I supposed to believe that if Iran's dictators tromp down the lives of their own people their agreements with us, Satin incarnate, will amount to anything?

I haven't heard any hosannas regarding his foreign policy ideas, have you? I see there are some Russians and some Arabs that don't think much of them or apparently, even of him. Now let's see, is that him as his role or him as a person? Maybe they smell the same thing I smell.

And where was he when Honduras realized that its leader was going to install himself as their dictator? When the people stood up to his actions, Obama supported the future dictator. Great. Obama is someone you want in your corner? Right? Wellll - not if freedom is at stake.

John Cox, 2009

From what it looks like, a recession which normally takes about two years to correct will likely last much longer - maybe ten years. Obama is doing all the same kinds of things FDR did to stretch that recession into ten years. Tell me that the best thing to do if you lose your job is to go out and borrow as much money as you can and spend it? Oh really?

And don't get me started on Cap and Trade and Gore's fantasy. Now that is a scam. I expect the Congress to fund, with billions, research and then a program to teach cows to not fart. On the other hand, maybe they will teach them how to light a fart.

At some point, Obama is going to be only a voice desperately trying to be listened to. The people will look elsewhere for leadership - real leadership - not this posturing kind of leadership. The leadership vacuum will then be manifest. How long until then? Not sure. But I am picking up a vibe.

Postmodern philosophy tells us that the truth is a social construction and that everything is political. Politics is how the truth is determined, they say. Obama thinks he is The Truth and The Way (that's why we and every other country around the world suffer his constant moralizing) and that he can control that social construction. To my way of thinking, he's a fool trying to control a fickle master, given his way of being. Much better to ground himself in reality and construct truth on that. It doesn't shift and suddenly wash out from under you.

Worrying about the consensus and leadership don't ride in the same boat. And this boat is headed for a vacuum in leadership.

John Cox, 2008

As painful as it is to watch this happening up close and personal, my hope is that it ends postmodernism and the socialist ideal forever. There are no good people nor right way to make socialism work. It is founded on a false premise. You simply cannot change a man to a being that will systematically sacrifice his own life without gutting him of his will to live or drive him into rebellion. And that is true even if he holds the ideal. I don't know of any Blacks in America touting the wonders of slavery. I don't expect them nor the Whites nor the Hispanics nor the Orientals nor any human being to be touting it this time around.

Does America have a true leader that can step into this vacuum? You know, the one that understands that America's Constitution was a breakthrough in human history that set forth the rights of the individual as primary and constructed the state to protect those rights? The one that understands the progress of human history and gets us back on the right track? Where is that leader?

A Citizen's Letter to Her Senator

E. Let us not forget the examples of a not so distant past that illustrate very well the efficiency of free markets and the wastefulness and inefficiency of a controlled economy.

The Soviet Union, one of the greatest empires in the world, collapsed mostly due to economic reasons, due to the inability of the government to predict and control supply and demand or efficiently launch and promote innovations. I myself came from that unfortunate country to the United States in search of freedom, and it horrifies me to see my new home repeating the mistakes of my old one and slipping into the abyss of socialism. You don’t need terrorists or nuclear weapons to destroy a free country. All you have to do is to make the people of a free country embrace socialism and they will destroy themselves and their country.

If we look back at the history of the United States, in the 19th century we see how much private initiative had to do with real progress and technological advances, especially in the energy market. In the 19th century our energy market was developing, as Alex Epstein put it so well, literally with the speed of thought. A new idea was tried as soon as it was thought of, because there were no obstacles in the form of government regulations.

Back then people were afraid that as soon as they ran out of coal they would be doomed. There were many so called scientists and analysts trying to predict the end of the world due to the limited amount of resources. If back then the US government had stepped in and monopolized the energy market and had tried to regulate coal distribution and the production of candles and lighting oils, we would all still live in the dark ages. Yet we were lucky, because that was the time of truly free markets, and in search of profit many innovators came up with the ideas of how to use oil. Those ideas changed history, and we leaped into a new more advanced era because we had oil and knew how to use it.

Do not forget that before oil and before coal people had to use wood. And then coal was a major discovery. What if back then the governments tried to regulate wood distribution and stifled any new ideas about alternative sources of energy like coal?

And by the way, carbon dioxide is not a threat. Oceans produce more carbon dioxide than all humans together. CO2 is required for life and in different historic periods more CO2 usually meant more vegetation and more prosperity. And it is not a general consensus of the scientists that the Earth is warming, in fact there is new data that the Earth is actually cooling, One of the EPA scientists, Alan Carlin, tried to express these ideas to his superiors. However this information was suppressed. Doesn’t it look like a conspiracy directed to destroying the USA's independence and competitiveness? Here is an excerpt from the interview with Alan Carlin.

How about instead of regulating our energy sector the government deregulated it? What if we gave the initiative back to private entrepreneurs? Private businesses are always in search of profit and a competitive edge. If we get to the point where oil is no longer viable, the one who finds a better, cheaper and more efficient alternative source of energy will not only beat their competitors but solve another energy crisis problem for the rest of mankind.

A free human mind is always in search of solutions to problems. An enslaved human mind does not function that way. You may force slaves to do physical labor, but you can’t force a slave’s mind to work. It will always be inferior to the mind of a free man. American inventors have always been on top of the world precisely because they were free not only to come up with new ideas, but also to profit from them. No matter how many great scientists worked in the Soviet labor camps, American scientists could always beat them because they were free.

The Cap and Trade bill will enslave American scientists to a predetermined government-controlled paradigm. Instead of being truly free to exercise their minds and harvest the fruits of their labor, they will have to struggle through a limited amount of alternative energy choices (most of which are not economically viable) in their government-created jobs.

How much efficiency do you expect from that? Are you so naïve that you truly believe that this kind of arrangement can help America solve her energy problems? I fear that if we stifle the human mind, if we rob private companies of their profits in order to invest in dubious government enterprises, if we impoverish people through higher taxes and prices in order to force them to convert to more expensive and less efficient sources of energy, we will create more problems than we are now hoping to solve. It will put this country at a huge disadvantage compared to what is possible and to other countries. And what is worse than that is we will destroy private innovation that has always been a source of American wealth and prosperity.

Please, stop and think twice before you vote for any bill (this or any other) that will put private America in government chains. I believe that there are many other Americans who write petitions to you asking to support things like Cap and Trade or public healthcare. You have to remember that any such initiative will enslave one part of the population in order to serve the other part of the population. This is exactly the kind of democracy that our Founding Fathers were warning us against. When two wolves and a sheep decide what is for lunch the outcome is predictable. This country is a republic based on the rule of Law not the mob, and the Supreme Law of this country is the Constitution of the United States.

You have all taken an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, and these kinds of bills are in complete violation of this monumental document. Stop thinking that more government is the solution to our problems. Stop thinking that you can please the ignorant masses by giving in to their irrational desires while violating the Constitution and the rights of the minorities, with the smallest minority being an individual. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the Soviets. More government is the problem that is now leading America on this path to nowhere.

Take a stand for freedom, this is what all free Americans expect from you. Don’t sacrifice the American principles for the sake of keeping your seat in Congress. You have to care about justice - an authentic justice based in reality, not some idea that does not work and makes no sense. You have to care about freedom and principles. You have to care about the real values that this country is based on, even if the majority sometimes thinks otherwise.

Remember it was not the majority that founded this country and its laws. It was not the majority that made this country great. It will never be the majority!

You have to take a stand. Simply voting or not voting is not enough anymore. You have to take a real stand for protection of the Constitution of the United States, for protection of the American principles and values. You have to take a real stand for the protection of individual rights. These rights do not include a free house, or a guaranteed job, or free healthcare. You have to take a stand and make yourself heard, so that others can join you! We have to save this country and what you are doing now is not helping this cause. You have to take a stand for what is right, not for what is required by the expediency of the moment!

We The People of this great country, the United States of America, are watching you!

Elena Carter

[Elena is a Russian translator and a co-owner of a fitness facility, East Cobb Exercise Excellence in Marietta, GA.]

The Ruse of Race - Revisited

Although I commented on the matter of race as a ruse in Obama's campaign (March 22, 2008), I am now clearer as to what is going here.

Race is a ruse, a decoy, in his campaign. I published this comment at Pajamas Media:

I’m now persuaded that the issue of race is a ruse in Obama’s campaign. The blacks are “the masses” used for Communist/Socialist purposes. (I plan to enumerate the positive evidence for this purpose in a future post.)

This is going to get distinguished because I don’t think for most people the election is about race. It may be for some blacks (and some whites) and it is being underscored by Congressman John Lewis here in GA when he says that “he never thought he would see the day when a black man was a candidate for President” like that by itself is a value. (If it is, then racism is a value.)

Obama has a history of walking on the backs of blacks to get political power. The results for the blacks he claimed to want to help have been negative and injurious. I’m thinking of the worsened condition of the public housing after his work to get Rezko funded, the increase in crime in black neighborhoods following the bill he advocated and voted for to stop “profiling” when police were acting to stop crime in those neighborhoods, and the absence of results in his education project.

Notice further how he is stressing that the middle class, comprised of millions of blacks, is not going to pay higher taxes, ignoring the effects (because the economy is an integrated whole) of higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy. His actions will hurt them as any other person in the economy and he could give a damn. It’s not the point of his candidacy. There’s no evidence that blacks have ever been anything other than a means to HIS power.

Notice that many of the directors at the top of his campaign are white. If race were the issue why would he have axed his black mentor, Reverend Wright? Or if race were the issue why didn't he go to Kenya or South Africa for his world debut? It is the ideological base of his campaign that has him choose his associates in the past and he continues to do so.

Obama, if he wins, is set to be a huge disillusionment for the thriving and success oriented blacks. In their completely valid desire for a black to become President as evidence that any remaining barriers to their full political freedom are now demolished, they will learn eventually that once more Obama gained power by stepping on their backs as his means. He is consistent everywhere in his record. "How could one of our own kind do this? How could success be so bitter?"

Leaving unchallenged Obama to make charges or erect defenses based on race allows him to keep his cover in place. The real issue is his political philosophy and drawing him back to this will be the most revealing of his essence in this political race.

I predict this to be a growing major issue in this campaign.

The Moral Basis of Capitalism

This interview is excellent in distinguishing the moral base of capitalism from the moral base that governs our culture and the cultures around the world. Here

Anti-Energy, Anti-production, Anti-human being

The Democrats have reached the apex of stubborn irrationality. For what? Misplaced environmental concerns that value snail darters and various species over the individual right to own, i.e., the use and disposal of, property and to take care of one's property including the species thereon as seen fit; and, for a global waming theory (alias climate change theory) that is not proven and for which data relentlessly piles up disproving it and which, if carried out, will completely upend the industrial economy that is in existence and on which we totally depend.

Neither of these motives are worth anything except as the basis for an over-reaching, unjust, and stupid power-lust run amok. These politicians and their hangers-on deserve to lose their influence as soon as it can be accomplished.

This video is a stark demonstration of how little the Democrats care about individual people in their daily lives (i.e., their right to their life) and our economy. This is stark irresponsibility and is utterly exasperating that it is going on, let alone continues. Get out of the way! Freedom immediately! Now is the time to deliver a "Come to Jesus" conversation to your Congressman.

Don't exclude McCain and many Republicans for their support of Environmentalism as Religion. They need a "Come to Jesus" talk too.

We as citizens are not free when it comes to economic activities - probably the bulk of our lives. The Civil Rights issue in this century, the 21st, is economic freedom - the individual right to apply one's reason, one's knowledge and one's ingenuity in one's economic decisions - which is essentially the right to own property, a corollary of the right to one's own life.

The ultimate individual right is the right, unfettered by government interference unless one commits a crime against another, to fully use one's mind since it is man's basic means of survival. Rather, we are as pets in a cage with the government as pet farmer.

I'm sorry, but I hate my master. And the last thing I want them to do for me is to care. I just went them to do their goddammed job set forth in the Constitution and which they have under oath agreed to do.

Wall Street Got Drunk?

The hell they did. Bush's statement is absurd, not from the standpoint that Wall Street didn't run with the openings they saw because of Washington's regulation, but because he places the cause as Wall Street.

A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.

Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.

The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.

The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.

The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.

All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.

The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.

John A. Allison IV - A Celebration of Freedom

The following is a tribute to a courageous freedom fighter in our time - John A. Allison IV. I delivered this speech to the Fellowship of Reason for its monthly Celebration of Freedom, April 6, 2008.
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John A. Allison IV was born in Charlotte, North Carolina in 1948. He went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Business Administration, and was graduated as a member of Phi Beta Kappa Society, a measure of his academic achievements. While at UNC, he discovered articles by Ayn Rand and was profoundly influenced by her philosophy. He went on to receive his MBA from Duke University and then entered the banking industry. His first job came in 1971, at the age of 23, when he went to work for BB&T, a regional bank headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He rose through the ranks to President in 1987 and then to CEO in 1989. He is still the CEO. The bank gained notoriety and romantic appeal when it announced that it would not lend to anyone who gained their property through eminent domain. The bank has grown to the 9th largest financial holding company in the United States with currently reported assets of 131.6 billion dollars. Beyond its headquarters state of North Carolina, it has branches in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C.

If you go to the webpage of the bank, you learn that the principles of the bank's operation are straight out of Rand’s ethics. The company business is “brazenly stated” to be based on the facts of reality. Psychologizing, "do-gooderism" and excuses do not get play here. An outstanding BB&T employee, the website says, embodies Purpose, Rationality and Self-Esteem, the primary moral values of a Randian hero.

As the company grew it formed the BB&T Charitable Foundation. The kinds of projects that the Charitable Foundation have supported have been various but one kind of project has thrust John Allison and BB&T into the middle of one of, if not the greatest of all cultural battles of our time. He has chosen to offer universities grants if they will teach a course in which Atlas Shrugged is one of the books used.

John Allison - along with many others - have seen that capitalism has won the materialism side of the argument. With the collapse of communist Russia, and the inability of many other socialist societies to produce the basic needs for a society possible in this modern time, and the quick turnaround of countries that have embraced capitalism, such as Ireland, Poland, India, China to the extent it is able to be free, plus the older cases of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the evidence is in. To the extent a country’s government fails to provide a legal structure that recognizes private property or it economically controls its society it will remain primitive or fail. If it controls the economy completely, it will fail completely. If it mixes control with some free aspects, it will be sluggish to the extent of the mixture.

So. What is capitalism? I quote Allison’s mentor, Ayn Rand:

Capitalism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned.

Rand’s definition makes sense and can be rationally validated. But, morally we, as a culture, cannot whole-heartedly abide it. We, at this point in time, are committed to a different moral base – altruism – where everything has to be justified in terms of the society as a whole or the welfare of another person. To stand up for one’s own life and the right to live it by using the individual faculty of one’s mind and the economic freedom that entails which is the basis of capitalism is impossible to do unless you are MORALLY prepared to do so. (By that I mean that you have developed within yourself moral certainty, which I call a “tap root.”) Mr. Allison’s mission, which he chose to accept, was to establish in the culture the moral basis of capitalism, the weak leg of its foundation. The book which elucidates that foundation most clearly at this point in time is Atlas Shrugged, hence, his requirement that Atlas Shrugged be taught in the course(s) supported by BB&T’s grants.

The grants Mr. Allison offers are voluntary. No university is required to accept the grants. To this point, 27 colleges and universities have chosen to accept BB&T’s gifts and its conditions. In fact, now colleges are seeking out BB&T’s offers.

In some cases, the gifts pay for a professor to teach the moral basis of capitalism. In other cases, BB&T has funded a chair at the university or a separate department. The colleges and universities which have accepted these grants are the following:

Carolina Colleges

Appalachian State University
Campbell University
Clemson University
Duke University
Greensboro College
High Point University
Johnson C. Smith University
North Carolina State University
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
University of North Carolina at Pembroke
University of North Carolina at Wilmington
University of South Carolina

Other than the Carolina Colleges

Christopher Newport University (VA)
George Mason University (VA)
Marshall University (WV)
Rockford College (IL)
University of Charleston (WV)
University of Florida
University of Kentucky
University of Texas at Austin
University of Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia University
Western Kentucky University
Wheeling Jesuit University (WV)

As these gifts have been announced, they have kicked up the dust that must arise by confronting the prevalent moral code. Professors have argued that they are being “forced” by these gifts. They are confused between choosing freely and not having a choice. In the context of their original freely chosen selection, they cancelled their right to the “force” argument. What happened that they forget that?

Or, they argue that this undermines academic freedom and the right of the professor to select what he wants to teach. They fail to mention how other gifts have been designed to specialize in a particular area or of government grants that shape research and hence course material. They don’t want opposition to the ideas they profess. If you go online and Google BB&T and the grants, you can find any number of newspaper columns and letters to the editor that argue against the conditions of the grant. Also, there are bloggers who feel they must let us know that they are disgusted by Atlas Shrugged and its advocacy of selfishness as a virtue. Or how boring the book is. Or how long it is. Or how poor a writer Ms. Rand is.

So the battle goes on.

Lest you worry about the complaints leveled at Atlas Shrugged, C. Bradley Thompson, the Executive Director of the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, says it this way:

“I’ve taught Atlas Shrugged for fifteen years during which time I’ve witnessed many remarkable things. For example, some 95% of my students report that Atlas Shrugged is the best book they’ve ever read. No book that I’ve taught comes remotely close to fostering a more robust exchange of ideas in the classroom. My students typically come to class after pulling an all-nighter debating Atlas with their friends, and then they pepper me with dozens of questions. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Ayn Rand’s ideas, few could deny that this is what the college experience is supposed to be like.

“During those few weeks each year when I teach Atlas Shrugged, I’ve seen hundreds of students become intellectually engaged in ways they weren’t before reading this extraordinary book. The comment I hear most often from students goes something like this: 'Atlas Shrugged sums up everything that I’ve always admired and believed but could never put into words.’ Ayn Rand’s novel speaks to many students’ deepest values and aspirations: it appeals to their sense of justice, integrity, honesty, and independence, and it appeals to their desire to live in a world where achievement and heroism are rewarded.

I chose to celebrate John A. Allison IV of BB&T and his courageous commitment to political freedom because it is one of the most crucial, philosophically fundamental, exciting, pro-freedom advances happening in the world today. Now that you know that it is happening, I hope you will join me in my joy of seeing this mighty moral battle unfold. The United States, the only country founded on individual rights is either going to blossom into full flower or fade from the earth.