Never have we, in my lifetime, had a more racist President. Racism means that one assesses and judges a man by the color of his skin. One doesn't look at a person's talents nor his character. Only his skin color matters. Skin color is the first and only means that one ought to use to know how to treat a person - says a racist.
Today I read an article with this headline: Obama Seeks Ideas on Reducing Black Joblessness.
What's wrong with this? First of all, it doesn't recognize how jobs are created. Jobs don't know race. That's a matter arbitrarily imposed on the issue. From this question, I wouldn't be surprised if Obama came up with the solution of enslaving blacks. After all, all slaves had a job. They didn't get paid with money and didn't have freedom, but they did have food and a place to stay - you know, government-level for providing stuff. Sounds perfect.
Because Obama singles out blacks, he treats them as a collective. What does this mean? It means that blacks, since he's using his bully pulpit to lead on this matter, are to be treated as part of this collective. Now, you and I know that in any group, there are good people and bad, talented people and people with little or no talent, meritorious people and those who aren't worth a damn. But, if Obama is asking us - all of us who are listening - to treat blacks as a collective as he is doing, then in order to protect ourselves, we will be forced to judge them all by the lowest common denominator. So, in effect, looking at a black, one has to say to himself (given Obama's lead here) that you can't trust them to do what you want? Why? Because there are some in this group that cannot be trusted - or should I say, can be trusted to be lazy, steal from you, not be a man of his word, etc. - and since we can only use skin color as the way to judge these people, then for our own self-protection we must avoid them.
This is the vile and evil nature of a racist. And make no mistake, Obama is a racist or he would never say something like what he is saying. Every day he opens his mouth, he makes life more difficult for all blacks. And this is why they need to kick his ass.
As for me, I reject Obama entirely because I reject collectivism entirely. A collectivist always destroys the best of men in favor of the worst of men.
The valid alternative to Obama's hideous racism (and John Lewis's and the Congressional Black Caucus's too) is Individual Rights - where every man is recognized as the owner of his life and is free to make it what he wants. What benefits blacks is the same for all people, not to minister to their neediness but to protect their individual rights and yes, I mean only the NEGATIVE rights.
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Showing posts with label race. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
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.
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.
*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.
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.
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.
_______________________________
*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.
Monday, May 30, 2011
The Man Who Lost His Voice
The phenomenon that is now becoming apparent to many of us is that no one gives a damn about what Obama thinks or has to say. He's lost his voice - which is to say, he's lost the listening that we and the world have for a long time granted him, the President of the United States.
Here is an article out of London on what is going on in the Middle East and how they definitely do not care what Obama says.
And here is an article about what the Veterans and active military think of Obama.
I'm expecting this chorus of non-believers and outright reactionaries to continue to grow. Why? Obama's word is not credible. He cannot be forthright about what he wants to accomplish and get the people on his side. He's has now manifested THE condition which has governed his Presidency - disconnected.
The other big fact is that if Obama at root is motivated to rid the world of colonial powers which he falsely claims America to be, and lasso her, the rogue, to the UN, he is going to have to learn that the Colonial/Anti-Colonial idea has passed from the motive of history. India and China and the states that now realize that production and trade is the way to a higher standard of living are not interested in getting rid of trading partners. Quite the contrary.
All of this augurs against Obama. He really is out of date and because he is, his great pretension to being a peacemaker simply will not work. He's trying to make peace not on the world's realities, but on some half-baked notions that he has about elitism, control and "I'm-going-to-set-the-world-straight-and-correct-the-injustice-to-my-ancestors." He increasingly looks ridiculous because he is pretentious, not real. His whole success depends on ginning up hatred - class hatred, race hatred, any and every kind of hatred that he can gin up - and fear - fear of the climate, fear of individual initiative, fear of a person protecting himself, fear of a person engaging in his right to free speech - all for one reason, to have people believe the grounds for his actions.
Sorry. Fewer and fewer takers.
The stark difference between how the world works and where Obama is in his thinking is brought out in this video.
I will reference other articles as they occur in the comments.
Here is an article out of London on what is going on in the Middle East and how they definitely do not care what Obama says.
And here is an article about what the Veterans and active military think of Obama.
I'm expecting this chorus of non-believers and outright reactionaries to continue to grow. Why? Obama's word is not credible. He cannot be forthright about what he wants to accomplish and get the people on his side. He's has now manifested THE condition which has governed his Presidency - disconnected.
The other big fact is that if Obama at root is motivated to rid the world of colonial powers which he falsely claims America to be, and lasso her, the rogue, to the UN, he is going to have to learn that the Colonial/Anti-Colonial idea has passed from the motive of history. India and China and the states that now realize that production and trade is the way to a higher standard of living are not interested in getting rid of trading partners. Quite the contrary.
All of this augurs against Obama. He really is out of date and because he is, his great pretension to being a peacemaker simply will not work. He's trying to make peace not on the world's realities, but on some half-baked notions that he has about elitism, control and "I'm-going-to-set-the-world-straight-and-correct-the-injustice-to-my-ancestors." He increasingly looks ridiculous because he is pretentious, not real. His whole success depends on ginning up hatred - class hatred, race hatred, any and every kind of hatred that he can gin up - and fear - fear of the climate, fear of individual initiative, fear of a person protecting himself, fear of a person engaging in his right to free speech - all for one reason, to have people believe the grounds for his actions.
Sorry. Fewer and fewer takers.
The stark difference between how the world works and where Obama is in his thinking is brought out in this video.
I will reference other articles as they occur in the comments.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
No, Shirley! Let's Try That One More Time!
The story this week is that of Shirley Sherrod talking about her judging people by race and transforming to a person who judges them by class.
Beep!
Both wrong Shirley! Both lead to the same consequences: No freedom and the theft of one man's life (I know it looks like a benefit at first) at the expense of another man's life - as public policy.
The Obama Administration immediately cast itself into a deeper HELL by falling all over itself to apologize for its quick judgment. Whoops! Another quick judgment! And just as bad!
Mr. Intelligence jumped from the racism of Sherrod to the thieving of Sherwood. So Robin Hood is the good?
Puh-leaze! If that's the case then it ought to be quite alright to relieve Obama of his millions. And Soros of his. And let me see how many there are that ought to cleanse their souls.
Not only is this pure hypocrisy as advocacy, it is simply wrong. To succeed, to excel, to achieve, and yes, to become wealthy is something that a person ought to want if he is actually seeking to better himself. Money is one measure. It's not the only one. Michael Jordan is an example of wealth - in basketball talent and works. Michelangelo is an example of wealth - in artistic talent and works. Others are example of wealth - in marketing talent and works, in entertainment talent and works, in manufacturing talent and works, etc.
No wealth, no future. So what Sherrod did by robbing the rich and giving to the poor was rob the poor man of his future. The underlying lesson was to be rich meant he would be robbed and probably no better off if he were to become rich. "Oh well, being rich was never my thing anyway."
None of this is America as conceived. None of it. It is as foreign to America as the Mandarin of China or Bantu of South Africa. Here, every man is protected in his life. He can work and earn property and live his life. It's his. He has a right to his life - ALL OF IT. Not a tiny piece of it. All of life and all that he sees is possible for life. This is America.
The thing that America used to do well but has literally been taxed out of doing is taking care of those that need a helping hand. Once the government started doing this, it has grown an industry of its own and it is no longer related to life. It's become the death industry - surviving on the blood of the poor for its existence. It survives on the sob stories of the poor. Their blood is the fertilizer that they must constantly give up so that the government can justify its need for the blood of the rich. What a horrible industry. Hideous to the hilt. I want to puke.
We are under a scourge. One that has been growing for a hundred years. It's the scourge of the little people - the people who hold individual human beings as small. The little people's biggest fear is that people can actually be great and large as a possibility that we can all aspire to. Rather than let man yearn and grow and fill these possibilities of his imagination and shape our government to allow this freedom (which is what it was designed to do), the little people strap down everything, regulate everything, tax everything, and in one way or another constrict everything and bend everything until is is some distorted, tortured, grotesque mis-shape of what it could be. This is the real pain of living in the United States right now.
When this passes, and only then, can we exhale.
And then...and then... we can inhale the sweet air of life once again.
Beep!
Both wrong Shirley! Both lead to the same consequences: No freedom and the theft of one man's life (I know it looks like a benefit at first) at the expense of another man's life - as public policy.
The Obama Administration immediately cast itself into a deeper HELL by falling all over itself to apologize for its quick judgment. Whoops! Another quick judgment! And just as bad!
Mr. Intelligence jumped from the racism of Sherrod to the thieving of Sherwood. So Robin Hood is the good?
Puh-leaze! If that's the case then it ought to be quite alright to relieve Obama of his millions. And Soros of his. And let me see how many there are that ought to cleanse their souls.
Not only is this pure hypocrisy as advocacy, it is simply wrong. To succeed, to excel, to achieve, and yes, to become wealthy is something that a person ought to want if he is actually seeking to better himself. Money is one measure. It's not the only one. Michael Jordan is an example of wealth - in basketball talent and works. Michelangelo is an example of wealth - in artistic talent and works. Others are example of wealth - in marketing talent and works, in entertainment talent and works, in manufacturing talent and works, etc.
No wealth, no future. So what Sherrod did by robbing the rich and giving to the poor was rob the poor man of his future. The underlying lesson was to be rich meant he would be robbed and probably no better off if he were to become rich. "Oh well, being rich was never my thing anyway."
None of this is America as conceived. None of it. It is as foreign to America as the Mandarin of China or Bantu of South Africa. Here, every man is protected in his life. He can work and earn property and live his life. It's his. He has a right to his life - ALL OF IT. Not a tiny piece of it. All of life and all that he sees is possible for life. This is America.
The thing that America used to do well but has literally been taxed out of doing is taking care of those that need a helping hand. Once the government started doing this, it has grown an industry of its own and it is no longer related to life. It's become the death industry - surviving on the blood of the poor for its existence. It survives on the sob stories of the poor. Their blood is the fertilizer that they must constantly give up so that the government can justify its need for the blood of the rich. What a horrible industry. Hideous to the hilt. I want to puke.
We are under a scourge. One that has been growing for a hundred years. It's the scourge of the little people - the people who hold individual human beings as small. The little people's biggest fear is that people can actually be great and large as a possibility that we can all aspire to. Rather than let man yearn and grow and fill these possibilities of his imagination and shape our government to allow this freedom (which is what it was designed to do), the little people strap down everything, regulate everything, tax everything, and in one way or another constrict everything and bend everything until is is some distorted, tortured, grotesque mis-shape of what it could be. This is the real pain of living in the United States right now.
When this passes, and only then, can we exhale.
And then...and then... we can inhale the sweet air of life once again.
Friday, November 20, 2009
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
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_freakThese 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
Friday, November 13, 2009
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
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
Thursday, October 22, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Is it Race or Class? Both Collectivist!
I read this article by Sultan Knish. You can go to the website by clicking on the title of the article below which is a link.
I think this interpretation of the Gates episode makes the most sense of any I've read. The issue of race which Obama seeks to keep in place covers a much deeper power issue - not the earned power, be it economic or intelligence, of individual citizens developing themselves, but the political power of a some individuals over others. Obama has, in every way he can, manifest the trappings of an imperial presidency. The one thing he cannot see and will have to learn the hard way is that he has to earn it - not by rhetoric, but by results which work. He's not merely weak in this area, he eschews it as necessary. Why? He won.
Race, Class and Henry Louis Gates in Obama's America
In the wake of the Gates arrest heard 'round the world, the media, Obama and of course Henry Louis Gates himself, have done their best to position this as a black and white incident, the collision of two men divided by race. But in fact the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was not about two men divided by race, but two men divided by class.
Henry Louis Gates was not arrested because he was black. He was arrested because he was a famous man who felt entitled to tell off a middle class police officer, warning him, "You don't know who you're messing with." Those are not the words of a powerless victim of America's racial oppression. They're the words of an important man who was warning the low paid city employee he was dealing with, that he was too prominent to be touched.
And indeed the remaining narrative, which moved from a media firestorm over a simple arrest, to a supportive statement from the White House, proved Gates right. Crowley indeed didn't "know who he was messing with". He was messing not with a black man, but with a rich and important man. A man who was above the law.
Had Gates been arrested because he was a black man, there would have been no media response and no attention from the White House. Had Henry Louis Gates been a plumber or an associate professor whose name wasn't listed in Who's Who in America, with three names, and a list of titles and awards long enough to choke a whale-- his arrest would never have made the news. Nor would Gates have acted the way he did.
Once arrested, Gates and his defenders cynically used race as a smokescreen to conceal the real issue, which was class. Henry Louis Gates was not the victim of racism, he was the beneficiary of it. And all the media's huffing and puffing about race in America cannot successfully transform a wealthy and prominent man who felt free to warn a police sergeant, "You don't know who you're messing with" into a victim.
Gates' arrest elicited sympathy from Obama, not because Gates shares a race with him, but because Henry Louis Gates shares a class with him. Like Gates, Obama has cynically done his best to exploit a racial guilt that has nothing to do, not only with him, but not even with his ancestors, to provide cover for his arrogance and sense of entitlement. Like the collision between Obama and Palin, the collision between Gates and Crowley, was a blatant clash of class, not race.
So too when Obama felt free enough to complain to his fellow upper class elitists at a San Francisco fundraiser about the middle class and lower class folks, "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion", it was not a racial complaint, it was a typically upper class liberal complaint. That same sense of class entitlement would feed the Obama campaign's fury against Sarah Palin for stepping outside her class, and proceed to portray her as ignorant white trash. So too Obama's media cult and Gates were eager enough to portray Crowley as thuggish and racist, only halting when they realized that their narrative had been disproven and was actually producing a backlash.
When black officers blasted Gates and in turn Obama, it ripped away the mask of race, and revealed the underlying issue of class. It was no longer one white man and one black man, but the middle class hardworking police officers pitted against the wealthy and powerful Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama. And that was a dangerous narrative, particularly after Obama had run up a tremendous deficit bailing out Wall Street banks and car companies.
Obama's condescending gambit of a beer summit was meant to appeal to what he thought were the sensibilities of the middle class white men he had offended. Of course that in turn served as a forum for Elizabeth Gates, Henry Louis Gates' daughter to pen an essay snidely commenting on Crowley's daughter's eyeliner, "she was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner on her lower lashes", again a comment denoting a class putdown, rather than a racial putdown.
In the famous photo of Crowley helping Gates walk, Americans may have seen compassion, but Gates only saw a lower class city employee providing service to a prominent civic figure. It is how Gates truly saw the conflict all along.
While American liberals insist on exploiting the arrest to argue that race remains a serious issue for Americans, the fact that large numbers of Americans were willing to vote for a black man into the top post in the nation suggests otherwise. It is not race that haunts America, but class. Yet what class is Henry Louis Gates?
Gates is not a captain of industry. He did not make money or gain fame inventing anything that people needed, or marketing a product that millions of Americans want. Instead Gates is a racial profiteer. A cleaner more academic version of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, running an institute named after W.E. Du Bois, a well known Communist who supported virtually every atrocity the USSR carried out, and was even willing to back Imperial Japan's massacres in China, in the name of race.
That is something which Gates has in common with Obama. Neither of the two men honestly came by their fame, fortune and positions. They came by them by exploiting racial guilt, not for any larger benefit, but for their own class standing. Behind all the twaddle about role models, is the elitism of two men, neither of whom have worked for a living, but who built up images of themselves as representing a race, in order to partake of the benefits of a class.
The rise of Obama, like the rise of Gates, is a story not of race, but of political parasitism. It is also the larger story of an America in which hard work no longer matters, in which it is safe to sneer at the middle class values of a Crowley or a Palin, because they represent an old fashioned dedication to achievement and duty, that is no longer meant to be relevant in the "New America".
In the "New America" you don't get recognized for hard work. You get recognized for being the squeaky wheel. For turning yourself into a brand. For finding an identity and marketing it for all you can. Race, gender, sexual identity, ethnicity are only counters in a larger game of media politics that everyone can play, but only a few can succeed at.
It's not about the 9 to 5 anymore. It's about the 12 to 3 in a four day week. It's about the triumph over the middle class by people who excel at talking, but not at working. It's about playing divide and conquer with a multicultural America, certain that no matter how it goes, you will always pocket the winnings. It's not just about class, it's about the new class. The one that doesn't earn money, but has it transferred over from the coffers of the taxpayer. It's not about America. It's about the New America. It's about the Obama's America.
And if you're "unfortunate" enough to still believe in hard work and doing your job as best as you can, you don't belong in it anymore. Here have a beer. Then help Henry Louis Gates, Jr, down the stairs.
___________________________________________
This picture has been circulating on the web today. I found it on an NBC website. While I'm sure that some people see this as appropriate in the "Royal Style," I see it as bad taste. It is one more indication of Obama's desparate need to possess the trappings of importance.
A couple months ago I saw a video where O was going for burgers and fries. The limo pulled up, he got in and the first thing he did was throw his feet on the seat opposite as would an unknowing or disrespting child. I was offended to see a 47-year old adult do such a thing. I'm one of the taxpayers that own that limo. I wouldn't want him coming into my house treating my stuff that way and I didn't like it he treated "my" limo that way. This attitude is endemic to his presidency, if not his life.
What am I learning from all this? Disgust is more formidable than fear to move beyond.
I think this interpretation of the Gates episode makes the most sense of any I've read. The issue of race which Obama seeks to keep in place covers a much deeper power issue - not the earned power, be it economic or intelligence, of individual citizens developing themselves, but the political power of a some individuals over others. Obama has, in every way he can, manifest the trappings of an imperial presidency. The one thing he cannot see and will have to learn the hard way is that he has to earn it - not by rhetoric, but by results which work. He's not merely weak in this area, he eschews it as necessary. Why? He won.
Race, Class and Henry Louis Gates in Obama's America
In the wake of the Gates arrest heard 'round the world, the media, Obama and of course Henry Louis Gates himself, have done their best to position this as a black and white incident, the collision of two men divided by race. But in fact the arrest of Henry Louis Gates was not about two men divided by race, but two men divided by class.
Henry Louis Gates was not arrested because he was black. He was arrested because he was a famous man who felt entitled to tell off a middle class police officer, warning him, "You don't know who you're messing with." Those are not the words of a powerless victim of America's racial oppression. They're the words of an important man who was warning the low paid city employee he was dealing with, that he was too prominent to be touched.And indeed the remaining narrative, which moved from a media firestorm over a simple arrest, to a supportive statement from the White House, proved Gates right. Crowley indeed didn't "know who he was messing with". He was messing not with a black man, but with a rich and important man. A man who was above the law.
Had Gates been arrested because he was a black man, there would have been no media response and no attention from the White House. Had Henry Louis Gates been a plumber or an associate professor whose name wasn't listed in Who's Who in America, with three names, and a list of titles and awards long enough to choke a whale-- his arrest would never have made the news. Nor would Gates have acted the way he did.
Once arrested, Gates and his defenders cynically used race as a smokescreen to conceal the real issue, which was class. Henry Louis Gates was not the victim of racism, he was the beneficiary of it. And all the media's huffing and puffing about race in America cannot successfully transform a wealthy and prominent man who felt free to warn a police sergeant, "You don't know who you're messing with" into a victim.
Gates' arrest elicited sympathy from Obama, not because Gates shares a race with him, but because Henry Louis Gates shares a class with him. Like Gates, Obama has cynically done his best to exploit a racial guilt that has nothing to do, not only with him, but not even with his ancestors, to provide cover for his arrogance and sense of entitlement. Like the collision between Obama and Palin, the collision between Gates and Crowley, was a blatant clash of class, not race.
So too when Obama felt free enough to complain to his fellow upper class elitists at a San Francisco fundraiser about the middle class and lower class folks, "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion", it was not a racial complaint, it was a typically upper class liberal complaint. That same sense of class entitlement would feed the Obama campaign's fury against Sarah Palin for stepping outside her class, and proceed to portray her as ignorant white trash. So too Obama's media cult and Gates were eager enough to portray Crowley as thuggish and racist, only halting when they realized that their narrative had been disproven and was actually producing a backlash.
When black officers blasted Gates and in turn Obama, it ripped away the mask of race, and revealed the underlying issue of class. It was no longer one white man and one black man, but the middle class hardworking police officers pitted against the wealthy and powerful Henry Louis Gates and Barack Obama. And that was a dangerous narrative, particularly after Obama had run up a tremendous deficit bailing out Wall Street banks and car companies.
Obama's condescending gambit of a beer summit was meant to appeal to what he thought were the sensibilities of the middle class white men he had offended. Of course that in turn served as a forum for Elizabeth Gates, Henry Louis Gates' daughter to pen an essay snidely commenting on Crowley's daughter's eyeliner, "she was wearing an appropriately heavy and charmingly untrained amount of green eyeliner on her lower lashes", again a comment denoting a class putdown, rather than a racial putdown.
In the famous photo of Crowley helping Gates walk, Americans may have seen compassion, but Gates only saw a lower class city employee providing service to a prominent civic figure. It is how Gates truly saw the conflict all along.While American liberals insist on exploiting the arrest to argue that race remains a serious issue for Americans, the fact that large numbers of Americans were willing to vote for a black man into the top post in the nation suggests otherwise. It is not race that haunts America, but class. Yet what class is Henry Louis Gates?
Gates is not a captain of industry. He did not make money or gain fame inventing anything that people needed, or marketing a product that millions of Americans want. Instead Gates is a racial profiteer. A cleaner more academic version of Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, running an institute named after W.E. Du Bois, a well known Communist who supported virtually every atrocity the USSR carried out, and was even willing to back Imperial Japan's massacres in China, in the name of race.
That is something which Gates has in common with Obama. Neither of the two men honestly came by their fame, fortune and positions. They came by them by exploiting racial guilt, not for any larger benefit, but for their own class standing. Behind all the twaddle about role models, is the elitism of two men, neither of whom have worked for a living, but who built up images of themselves as representing a race, in order to partake of the benefits of a class.
The rise of Obama, like the rise of Gates, is a story not of race, but of political parasitism. It is also the larger story of an America in which hard work no longer matters, in which it is safe to sneer at the middle class values of a Crowley or a Palin, because they represent an old fashioned dedication to achievement and duty, that is no longer meant to be relevant in the "New America".
In the "New America" you don't get recognized for hard work. You get recognized for being the squeaky wheel. For turning yourself into a brand. For finding an identity and marketing it for all you can. Race, gender, sexual identity, ethnicity are only counters in a larger game of media politics that everyone can play, but only a few can succeed at.
It's not about the 9 to 5 anymore. It's about the 12 to 3 in a four day week. It's about the triumph over the middle class by people who excel at talking, but not at working. It's about playing divide and conquer with a multicultural America, certain that no matter how it goes, you will always pocket the winnings. It's not just about class, it's about the new class. The one that doesn't earn money, but has it transferred over from the coffers of the taxpayer. It's not about America. It's about the New America. It's about the Obama's America.And if you're "unfortunate" enough to still believe in hard work and doing your job as best as you can, you don't belong in it anymore. Here have a beer. Then help Henry Louis Gates, Jr, down the stairs.
___________________________________________
This picture has been circulating on the web today. I found it on an NBC website. While I'm sure that some people see this as appropriate in the "Royal Style," I see it as bad taste. It is one more indication of Obama's desparate need to possess the trappings of importance.
A couple months ago I saw a video where O was going for burgers and fries. The limo pulled up, he got in and the first thing he did was throw his feet on the seat opposite as would an unknowing or disrespting child. I was offended to see a 47-year old adult do such a thing. I'm one of the taxpayers that own that limo. I wouldn't want him coming into my house treating my stuff that way and I didn't like it he treated "my" limo that way. This attitude is endemic to his presidency, if not his life.
What am I learning from all this? Disgust is more formidable than fear to move beyond.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, July 27, 2009
What a Disappointment
I've been trying to put my finger on what I felt as Obama got himself entangled in Gates' racial outburst. Irritation, betrayal, disbelief - all of it amounted to a big disappointment.
But what exactly was betrayed? I didn't vote for Obama. I have never agreed with the Marxist/socialist ideas he steeped himself in for many years prior to his running for office. Further I didn't trust nor like his character. I saw him as duplicitous - creating a public front for a man that didn't exist.
A lot of people voted for Obama because they hoped he would take us beyond the racial pain of our past - that he would transcend race. These were black, brown and white. Hope sprang from the ideal of a world where one's race is not the issue - like the MLK ideal.
Even I held a certain hope at the beginning of his presidency - that he would be someone I could admire - surely not in all things, but in some things.
With Obama's thoughtless reaction, we could see that he did not hold this ideal, the one that many hold. He's not a Reverend King; he's a Reverend Wright.
Immediately people took sides and began to hone their story. The black distrust of the police has a long history as does the white feeling of being unfairly accused. My disgust with this drama covered my real loss - which I now think was just a fantasy.
This was the source for the betrayal and subsequent disappointment.
This is a big deal. And I see no indication that Obama will be able to put this Humpty-Dumpty back together. He simply does not have the character for it. He would actually have to believe and speak a vision of man that he does not possess.
(For a satire on Gates' view of race, go here. This came out July 31.)
For that read Rand. I suggest Andrew Bernstein's recent Objectivism in One Lesson, particularly the chapter "Man the Hero" which follows six chapters on the basics that give rise to her view of man.
But what exactly was betrayed? I didn't vote for Obama. I have never agreed with the Marxist/socialist ideas he steeped himself in for many years prior to his running for office. Further I didn't trust nor like his character. I saw him as duplicitous - creating a public front for a man that didn't exist.
A lot of people voted for Obama because they hoped he would take us beyond the racial pain of our past - that he would transcend race. These were black, brown and white. Hope sprang from the ideal of a world where one's race is not the issue - like the MLK ideal.
Even I held a certain hope at the beginning of his presidency - that he would be someone I could admire - surely not in all things, but in some things.
With Obama's thoughtless reaction, we could see that he did not hold this ideal, the one that many hold. He's not a Reverend King; he's a Reverend Wright.
Immediately people took sides and began to hone their story. The black distrust of the police has a long history as does the white feeling of being unfairly accused. My disgust with this drama covered my real loss - which I now think was just a fantasy.
This was the source for the betrayal and subsequent disappointment.This is a big deal. And I see no indication that Obama will be able to put this Humpty-Dumpty back together. He simply does not have the character for it. He would actually have to believe and speak a vision of man that he does not possess.
(For a satire on Gates' view of race, go here. This came out July 31.)
For that read Rand. I suggest Andrew Bernstein's recent Objectivism in One Lesson, particularly the chapter "Man the Hero" which follows six chapters on the basics that give rise to her view of man.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Race
There are some very bad signs for the future of our polity in this election. The attempt to divide and conquer. to drive a wedge between the dependent-minded people and the creative, independent-minded people; the employee and the employer, black and white (remember Reverend Wright?) is coming strongly into the picture. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized here this morning, this needs to stop.
Yesterday the WSJ ran an article on the funding of Acorn, a "community organizing" organization which corrupts the ideals of social justice for poltical purposes to gain power and government grants. This amounts to voter registration for the Democrats, although by law they cannot specify a political party. Why President Bush stupidly signed this into law as part of the mortgage bailout I do not know. Here
To clarify, I do not agree with the ideals of social justice because it is a collectivist idea and attempts to redress what it sees as economic injustice, a reversal of the law of cause and effect. I do agree with them when their work is consistent with the application of individual rights.
ACORN although it justifies itself in terms of social justice it is not a legitimate expression of social justice. See the link above on the ideals of social justice to grasp what a person dedicated to these ideals got into when he worked with ACORN.
The gold standard for legitimate social justice looks like the movement Martin Luther King created to right the wrongs of Jim Crow. It wasn't funded by Washington. It was a man with a vision for all mankind who enrolled people to peacefully demonstrate such that the American people could see the racial injustice for themselves on their own TVs and be moved to purge racial injustice from the country's laws.
It is completely legal for a political party to register people to vote - on their own dime. It is obscene to steal people's money by law (if you don't think the gun is behind the law, try not paying your taxes) to fund this kind of campaign, a corruption of authentic principled justice based on every single person's right to HIS life.
If this isn't challenged in the Supreme Court, we've had it. When the "takers" outnumber the "makers" and vote your money into their pocket, dissolution is imminent. It violates the First Amendment which covers the freedom of political speech. And if the government expropriates your money, what resources do you have left to actively pursue this freedom? The Democratic Party is way over the top on this matter and those Congressmen, President Bush and all the agitators for this kind of action deserve to be publicly and vociferously sanctioned.
It cannot help the African-American who is going to be so crudely lumped by his skin color into a category that distinguishes nothing regarding his character or merit. See Racism. He will be used for greedy unscrupulous men's political power and he will end up paying a price that the honorable blacks do not deserve. So unjust. This breaks my heart - for them and for my country.
This appeared in National Review Online. Ward Connelly, an African-American, has been in the trenches fighting for the equality of all men under the law and has worked by any means he can find to get rid of quotas and preference based on race, ethnicity or any group privileges. He is hated by the victimologists of his race. Nevertheless, he's inspired by MLK's vision for mankind.
My Preferences
John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.
By Ward Connerly
One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.
Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”
Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.
Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.
In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.
Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”
I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.
If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”
It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.
And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.
Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.
— Ward Connerly is the author of Lessons from my Uncle James and a former regent of the University of California.
You can judge Barack Obama for yourself. I'm clear about my judgment of him.
Yesterday the WSJ ran an article on the funding of Acorn, a "community organizing" organization which corrupts the ideals of social justice for poltical purposes to gain power and government grants. This amounts to voter registration for the Democrats, although by law they cannot specify a political party. Why President Bush stupidly signed this into law as part of the mortgage bailout I do not know. Here
To clarify, I do not agree with the ideals of social justice because it is a collectivist idea and attempts to redress what it sees as economic injustice, a reversal of the law of cause and effect. I do agree with them when their work is consistent with the application of individual rights.
ACORN although it justifies itself in terms of social justice it is not a legitimate expression of social justice. See the link above on the ideals of social justice to grasp what a person dedicated to these ideals got into when he worked with ACORN.
The gold standard for legitimate social justice looks like the movement Martin Luther King created to right the wrongs of Jim Crow. It wasn't funded by Washington. It was a man with a vision for all mankind who enrolled people to peacefully demonstrate such that the American people could see the racial injustice for themselves on their own TVs and be moved to purge racial injustice from the country's laws.
It is completely legal for a political party to register people to vote - on their own dime. It is obscene to steal people's money by law (if you don't think the gun is behind the law, try not paying your taxes) to fund this kind of campaign, a corruption of authentic principled justice based on every single person's right to HIS life.
If this isn't challenged in the Supreme Court, we've had it. When the "takers" outnumber the "makers" and vote your money into their pocket, dissolution is imminent. It violates the First Amendment which covers the freedom of political speech. And if the government expropriates your money, what resources do you have left to actively pursue this freedom? The Democratic Party is way over the top on this matter and those Congressmen, President Bush and all the agitators for this kind of action deserve to be publicly and vociferously sanctioned.
It cannot help the African-American who is going to be so crudely lumped by his skin color into a category that distinguishes nothing regarding his character or merit. See Racism. He will be used for greedy unscrupulous men's political power and he will end up paying a price that the honorable blacks do not deserve. So unjust. This breaks my heart - for them and for my country.
This appeared in National Review Online. Ward Connelly, an African-American, has been in the trenches fighting for the equality of all men under the law and has worked by any means he can find to get rid of quotas and preference based on race, ethnicity or any group privileges. He is hated by the victimologists of his race. Nevertheless, he's inspired by MLK's vision for mankind.
My Preferences
John McCain, Barack Obama, and civil rights today.
By Ward Connerly
One thing I have learned from more than 13 years of fighting for equal treatment for every American regardless of race, sex, color, or ethnicity is that politicians can triangulate more about this issue than almost any other — and get away with it. A few days ago, Sen. John McCain gave his support to our effort in Arizona to prohibit preferences through a constitutional amendment. In explaining his reason for doing so, McCain said, “I have always opposed quotas.” Instantly, Sen. Barack Obama pounced.
Speaking at a convention of “journalists of color” (the participants gave him standing ovations at the beginning and at the end of his appearance), Obama said, “I am disappointed that John McCain flipped and changed his position. I think in the past he had been opposed to these kinds of Ward Connerly referenda or initiatives as divisive. And I think he's right. You know, the truth of the matter is, these are not designed to solve a big problem, but they're all too often designed to drive a wedge between people.”
Having been thrust into a presidential campaign, it is appropriate for me to offer my thoughts.
Over the past ten years, no American president, Congress, legislature, or governor has acted to eliminate preferences — in other words, to enforce the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which commands the government to treat us all “without regard to race, color, national origin or sex.” In addition, the United States Supreme Court has handed down conflicting opinions about the matter.
In response, I have led the national effort to enforce the act through ballot initiatives in states that allow them. I find it interesting that the only people who consider such initiatives “divisive” are the ones who oppose them, such as Sen.Obama. Such people never seem to find preferences themselves “divisive.” Apparently, as long as those who are harmed by such policies — and those who believe preferences are fundamentally wrong — keep their mouths shut, sweet harmony will ring throughout the land.
Also, it seems that Obama is divided against himself on the issue. In his famed “race speech,” when he was trying to appeal to white Democrats to get the issue of Jeremiah Wright off his back, he acknowledged that affirmative action engenders resentment. Just a few days ago, Obama suggested he was ready to support class-based instead of race-based affirmative action: “I am a strong supporter of affirmative action when properly structured so that it is not just a quota, but it is acknowledging and taking into account some of the hardships and difficulties that communities of color may have experienced, continue to experience, and it also speaks to the value of diversity in all walks of American life. We are becoming a more diverse culture, and it's something that has to be acknowledged.”
I concur, but I might define “properly structured” differently than Obama does. What he fails to say is that it is not only “communities of color” that experience hardships and difficulties. Nor does he say how, as president, he can achieve his stated goal of uniting the American people while asking those not “of color” to look the other way when discriminated against.
If Obama is truly concerned about divisiveness, why didn’t he speak out when his foot soldiers at ACORN were taking pride in blocking our petition circulators from gathering signatures in Missouri? Their despicable tactics of harassment give new meaning to the term “divisive.”
It is true, by the way, that McCain has “flipped” about whether ballot initiatives are appropriate as a device for ending preferences. It is not true that he has “flipped” with regard to preferences themselves. He has consistently expressed disdain for preferential treatment based on race.
And even if he had changed his position substantively, he would be far from alone. Millions of Americans are at a different point in their thinking about race today than they were ten years ago, when McCain opposed legislation to place an initiative on the ballot to end preferences in Arizona. For this, Senator Obama should be thrilled. Without race “flippers,” he would not be the presumptive nominee of the Democratic party for president of the United States.
Until we reach the point that we are living out what Martin Luther King Jr. often called the “true meaning of our creed” that all men (and women) are created equal, how we deal with the issue of race will be a work in progress. Something tells me that, deep in his soul, Sen. Obama knows this. Certainly, he should.
— Ward Connerly is the author of Lessons from my Uncle James and a former regent of the University of California.
You can judge Barack Obama for yourself. I'm clear about my judgment of him.
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