Obama's Advocacy of Wealth Redistribution

This was discovered in 2008, but it is interesting to listen how smooth this man is. If you are taken in by people sounding not only learned but "good*," then he sounds fabulous.



What is to be redistributed?

Property.

Whose property?

Yours. I didn't hear him excepting you from having your property taken and redistributed, did you? (Listen again, carefully, if you just assumed that he couldn't possibly mean you.)

And what is property?

Anything that is yours - the body you were born with and anything that you have mixed your labor with to obtain or have been given by someone who properly owned it. It includes your savings, your precious things, the organs of your body. (Stolen property is not properly owned.)

They can take that?

Yes, any of it and all of it. The only criteria is that they can point to someone who, in their estimation, needs it.

How do I know they need it?

Do you think this question amounts to anything in the face of the State and it's wants? Why do they care what you and I think if they already appropriate the right to own us and everything that is ours?
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The Founders of this country knew that governments can and will take anything they want from their citizens unless they are stopped. The Constitution was set up to stop them. Here we have a man who is openly claiming that the constitution was not written as it should have been and is advocating that the Government take anything it wants in order to redistribute it.

Do you want to understand why people hate, are scared to death of, and want to get rid of Obama? Do you understand why they might go on strike? It's because he has set himself up as a direct threat to every man's liberty and property, properly gained - the two requirements for you to be able to live as a human being. He has proclaimed himself, in Ibsen's words, "An Enemy of the People," albeit smooooooth as silk.

Have you seen any evidence that he isn't working to carry out his vision?

I have not.

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*The good that Obama relies on is that you are willing to sacrifice for the group and the "greater good" as determined by the political elite. It is not really the good. It is the good that has come down to us via culture of at least 2000 year old.

One of the ways we know that it is not the good is because socialism and top-down government planning always, always, always fail. Why? Because these schemes separate results from motive power for the individual citizens which all their schemes depend on - and motive power only comes via the individual, not groups and collectives.

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Added post: 7-23-2011
Here is another video of oh-so-smooth Obama speaking on July 22, 2011. He says Americans will pitch in if asked. One problem: They are not asked. They do not contribute to this voluntarily. They are forced. Also notice that for Obama, there are no individuals and individual choices. He is thoroughly collectivist.

And what happens when people are forced? Their motive power evaporates because they have no control over their own fate. A person's ends are, by law, prevented from being gained by his motives and actions. They are forced to give up their resources to those who are not motivated to produce, but to rule. So, the resources go to support their further rule. This is the great evil of socialism and why America is in the death throes of its experiment of liberty. Capitalism is the economy of free men. It cannot work when a man's mind is in chains.



The real mantra for this era, the one that would make a difference is "Get out of the way!" Another one with a religious cast is "Let my people go."

The Lost People of America

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

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

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

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

image by ukyo_freak

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This question shall be taken up in a future post.

image by Cotter158

Race, Politics and Glenn Beck

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3

Have We Ever Seen Such A War Against Reality?

The bad news piles up day after day, hour after hour. This morning I read where the unemployment rate among the young is 52.8%, up from a rate in the lower 20s on average. In the face of this, two months ago the government raised the minimum wage, an act of force which always takes it toll on the least skilled and least knowledgeable the most. The young and the poor take this hit.

Rather than free the economy such that people can make agreements to work for a wage, any wage they are willing to accept, the government sees all of this as more reason to redistribute people's wealth to the poor. This is insane.

But this is not the only thing that is insane.

We have an Administration and a Congress that are hell-bent on an agenda - and it is an agenda with a poor, extremely poor, track record. Socialism, with its latest incarnation known as Progressivism, is a total failure. Government force, in fact, except to stop force initiated by someone against another's rights, is a failure as far as I can see. People will disagree with me on this, but I'm not persuaded. If something is so damn good, why does government have to hold a gun to people's heads in order to force them to it? There's something off in their argument.

Freedom provides abundance and in the process makes available the things that the poor need. (The poor is the current justification for everything.) This is the avenue to a higher standard of living for all people. But instead of recognizing this, this government is into total regression.

What happened? Did we as a culture get hung up on dealing with a flood of wealth? Was it so good that suddenly some diabolical moralistic puritanism suddenly overwhelmed us? That's how it seems.

Guilt has its power and now we are besieged with stories that the population will either be decimated by Swine Flu or too much carbon dioxide in the air. Neither of these dire predictions are going to pan out. Only an unearned guilt for being a bad generally happy, productive nation could give them any consideration.

There are many steps on the road to a successful outcome whereby society is lifted to another level. One thing is for damn sure true. It is never caused by government force.

And yet, that is what we are seeing in dump-truck loads. And that is what all the tea party fuss is really about. As another truck up-ends its bed, the government force required via taxation or regulations is just dumped on the people. We don't like it. In fact, we hate it!

Well, some seem to like it. Some think it will cause the ideal society. Some are apologists for it, desperately trying to rationalize it via non-essential reason and argument. (They don't question whether it is right or wrong, just whether we can afford it. They are like the ACORN employees up a few rungs on the intellectual scale.) And, some want to reside in the trappings of tradition, honoring "The Man who is our President" rather than really holding him accountable.

And there are those who are cynical about it or simply passive. "We are all going to die anyway and someone's going to throw dirt on our face, so why get all worked up?" Or, "I can't solve it so I'm not going to worry about it."

The unreality is everywhere. The government has exploded its spending and now it is to the point that we are not going to be able to get our production of good and services to the point where we will ever be able to pay for it. And the government doesn't even care. Geithner has talked about some other currency becoming the store of value for the world. This means to me that he and the government do not want to be held accountable to keep the currency sound. "Noooo. That would mean keeping spending in check. Can't do that. Too many mouths to feed."

Suddenly the "worker" is vaunted and the businessman, the creator of businesses and jobs which the worker works, vilified. The bigger the business the more hated the businessman. Isn't it obvious except to the willfully blind, that making it harder morally and practically for the businessman to succeed means that there will be fewer jobs? And, when we are down to street markets, do you really think that the prior laborers will produce better goods and do well rather than those with a brain and the entrepreneurial spirit? Not likely. But Michael Moore is undaunted.

And there is nothing more insane than the environmentalists. These people are the new "Christians" marching to war. "Onward 'Environ' soldiers, marching as to war." They will fight for the life of a fish any day before the life of a man. If man comes in last in this value war, then I say, "Screw the planet."

When it comes to the environment, Al Gore is head "dementia-ist." But Obama is not far behind. At the UN, he said this: "If we continue down our current course, every member of this Assembly will see irreversible changes within their borders. Our efforts to end conflicts will be eclipsed by wars over refugees and resources. Development will be devastated by drought and famine. Land that human beings have lived on for millennia will disappear." I would like to add this: "If man doesn't change his ways, man, along with every worm in the earth and bird in the air shall pass from the face of the earth forever, and ever." Here is a man with a clear case of what I call biblical insanity. (Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a much larger context for appreciating how the earth and its climate works.)

And while the politicians, Obama leader among them, castigate greed as the almighty sin, he greedily grabs political power tying everyone hand and foot - except all those who love the double standard and bask in its light. "We know better and besides, we won," they tell us. They know when its time for a person to live or die and aim to insert themselves between you and your body. Businessmen who seek to profit off this aren't really businessmen in my book. They are just the sucker fish attached to the body of the whale. We are at a low ebb on the integrity scale.

In a free country, you get narcissists. They are part of the colorful range of expression which a free country begets. The culture takes them in stride waiting for their egomania to do them in. It normally does unless they produce something of lasting value.

Strong egos are necessary for any forward motion of society so I'm not damning them per se. There are healthy egos and unhealthy egos. Narcissists are unhealthy egos. Commentators have been seeing Obama as a narcissist for some time. But in the UN speech he went further than before. He had to make the United States small and himself "The One" who is saving it and the world. (And if you want to get a clear picture of how full of s--t he is, he told the UN Thursday how he handled Guantanamo and today we learn he's not going to handle it.)

Obama has an agenda. Many have seen this. Now it is obvious that his agenda precludes his seeing or paying attention to reality, which is asserting itself all around him. People are protesting the dump-truck approach to instituting his agenda. His ACORNs and Czars are seen as devoid of a moral compass or outright destroyers. Do you think he will get it? I'm not sure he is capable.

We've had plenty of folly in this country, but has there been a time when it has been greater?

Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?

By Yaron Brook

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Types of Government - Image

Click on image to enlarge or read below

Perfecting the self.
"We" by voluntary association.
Life by agreement and contract.

All property privately owned.
Unlimited resources; Wealth created.
Free trade for mutual benefit.

The conquest of nature.

Emancipation of human energy.

Capitalism
Limited principled Government

Limited by a Constitution.

Constitution protects individual rights, freeing men from men.
Separation of church and state; separation of economy and state.

Morally justified by the Right to Live for One's Self - Life as an End in Itself.

Unstable Mix -- Welfare State

Morally justified by the Greater Good - Life as a Means to Another's Ends.

Theocracy
Man of God

Socialism
Dictator
Oligarchy

Monarchy
King

Unlimited arbitrary Government.

Searching for Saviors.
All forms of "us vs. them."

All property owned or regulated by the State.

Resources limited - Perpetual war.
Society devolves to battling ethnic and racial groups.

The conquest of men; Live by permission - slavery.

The control of human energy.

Also see here.

Destroy the Economy to Save the Economy

Biden is explicit about it.

Where are the intelligent? Where are those that understand that the economy is an integrated whole? Where are those that understand that money stolen from those who have it and given to those who don't does not put money in the hands of the creators of businesses and jobs? Why is there so much emphasis put on the destruction of wealth and none on the principles to be be followed in order to create it?

Is this stupidity or intended? And who should pay rather than who will pay for this reversal of cause and effect?

Will someone please tell me where this has ever worked?

S e a of D e b t

The Coming Leadership Vacuum

I think Obama has just about worn out his rhetoric.

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Cox, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

John Cox, 2008

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

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

Are You Crazy?

Have Americans completely lost their minds?

America is the best producer of goods and services the world has ever known. Right now it has the best Health Care available for the most citizens of any place in the world. It produces more procedures and medicines and has more facilities to cure or ameliorate the ailments of mankind than anyplace else. There are some problems, but a poor person is rich in America compared to the poor around the world.

And you want to trade that for someone telling you what, how much and who you can go to for your health care? ARE YOU NUTS?

Every place that has GOVERNMENT Health Care must, by necessity, move to the lowest common denominator of health care. The GOVERNMENT harnesses, i.e., ENSLAVES, the doctors and all others in the system by refusing to pay them what they want and would otherwise get in a free market. The best ones leave the business. It controls the pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical research so that you get what the GOVERNMENT wants to pass out. It controls the hospitals, it controls the nurses, it controls the ambulance services, it controls every bit and piece of an otherwise complex system with abundant options and practices. It chokes, i.e., asphyxiates, i.e., takes the breath of life away from every doctor, every nurse, every office, every prescription and drug producer, every ambulance service, every person in the industry with paperwork.

And for that reason it will kill people too. Yes, I said kill them - by deprivation, by neglect, by policies which will follow the book, not the needs of the patient.

It will destroy the doctor - patient relationship. You will be a cipher, not a person.

Because the demand for Health Care will go through the roof because it is FREE, which it isn’t, it will be rationed. You will not be able to get the very thing that may save your life. You will have to wait too long or it won’t be available. What you will get are excuses and delays and government policies. None of these will do a damn thing for you!

In the scarcity of Health Care that will be CAUSED by THE GOVERNMENT, guess who will be selected to suffer this scarcity the most? The old, the infirm, the handicapped – anyone who is determined by THE GOVERNMENT to not be in the mainstream of productive citizens doing the work that the GOVERNMENT considers valuable. Of course they will never say that. It will just happen by default. Since you do not get to choose your health care, the GOVERNMENT will make the decisions. And they don't know if you are a genius or an idiot, a producer or a moocher. Why would a bureaucrat care about those things that are not reflected in their numbers? There is no other possibility.

And because Health Care will be costly and scarce, you will be regulated regarding your own life. If you eat a Twinkie, followed to its ultimate conclusion, you will violate the law, can be fined or taken to jail or simply spurned. If you smoke a cigarette, you will violate the law and can be fined or taken to jail or refused treatment. You will be required to diet, to exercise, to sleep the right number of hours, to eat the right things, drink the right things, everything that THE GOVERNMENT says, by fiat, you must do to obtain its health care. It will use ladles of guilt and post millions of banners and signs that no one reads about how you are a good boy if you follow their instructions. It won't be like that you say? Not immediately, but the pressure will always be in that direction.

And have you seen the GOVERNMENT’S health care facilities? Take a look at the public facilities they have now. Go to your county health department’s waiting room, get in line in a dingy shabby room painted institution green and see how you like it. Or go to the veterans hospitals and watch the tired nurses, who will be on a GOVERNMENT pay scale along with the doctors and secretaries and all the other employees, complain about their job. Or go to the big public hospitals where you wonder why it is not as clean as your home?

When the GOVERNMENT controls everything, there won’t even be the attraction of security that the GOVERNMENT offers to its employees. With everyone employed by the GOVERNMENT that distinction won’t exist. It will be all about we HAVE TO. Whining will be elevated to an art form. This is the result of having no choice.

And are you aware that regimentation via GOVERNMENT control causes stupidity? If you don't think the I-don't-care attitude of government workers will not spill over into their care, you are really crazy. Livers will be accidentally removed, a wrong leg will be amputated, the anesthesiologist will accidentally kill your loved one instead of anesthetizing them. Simple procedures will become complicated and complicated ones will be incorrectly made simple. Instead of keeping their mind on the business at hand they will be thinking about their latest tweet or when they can get back to Facebook.

Here's a video interviewing ordinary people in Canada about their healthcare. And here is an interview with someone who lived under England's single-payer health care system. They don't even get Novocaine when their teeth are drilled.

This is your future. Are you willing to trade the riches that a free system which encourages superb service and good care in order to attract business FOR THIS? What are you thinking?

People do not get that Universal Health Care is a DIRECT ATTACK on them as human being. It attacks everything that gives rise to being human: your valuing nature as such, your particular values, your mind, your reason, your life and those you care about.

An American watching the above video can see how Canadians are no longer people in the full sense of the word. They have given up. They have ACCEPTED the system, its craziness, and their plight. They make excuses for it. Most Americans I know would have said, "Enough of this horseshit. I'm going some place else!"

ARE YOU CRAZY?

Health care is too costly, you say?

Then free it up. Allow more competition, not less. Allow it to meet more needs at all levels instead of less. Already health care is bound hand and foot with regulations that are completely unnecessary. I don’t remember anyone complaining about health care 60 years ago. You had the doctor you trusted and you went to him if you had a problem. You worked out the cost and paid it. Insurance was varied and available at any level you wanted it. If you want better and less costly health care, FREE IT UP! Freedom is the answer, not GOVERNMENT control and regulation.

Here is a conversation about getting the GOVERNMENT out of the way.

Freedom has always been the answer. It unleashes the human engine that produces a torrent of goods and services. It unleashes the ideas and production of the best minds as well as the lesser ones. It unleashes the entrepreneur. There is no waiting in freedom. If you want it, you think about it, you work for it and you pay for it. If you don’t want it, you don’t.

I can’t believe that people are willing to trade abundance for poverty, pennies for the gold they now have and could have more of. But apparently they are about to do so. What has gotten hold of you? Are we now to wear hair shirts for no reason except to prove we are suffering? Are the Liberals, the Progressives, among us as unenlightened as medieval Christians? We have to be gripped by some vast superstition.

When Obama, Reid and Pelosi give up their special government health care program and go stand in line in Canada as an ordinary citizen, I will believe they have something other than pure lies to say to us.

ARE YOU CRAZY?

STOP RIGHT NOW, AMERICA.

WAKE UP!

CALL AND WRITE YOUR CONGRESSMAN AND THE PRESIDENT NOW. NO UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE. ABSOLUTELY - NO! NO! NO!
ARE YOU CRAZY?

A Cartoon from 1934

Chicago Tribune
1934

Those unwilling to learn the lessons of the past
are condemned to repeat them.

An economic bubble takes an average of two years to correct itself - with one requirement: that the economy is free to make the correction. In the 30s, that correction was stretched to 10 years and even then it was not in the process of correcting itself. It was the war that drafted the unemployed (many to their death) and put the women and old folks to work.

A free economy designs itself to provide whatever the people in the economy need and are willing to work for. It is constantly correcting itself unless the government intervenes and thwarts the corrective process - the mechanism that led to the crash in 1929 and the collapse in 2008 as well as other bubbles between those times. The rational government action is to cut spending, get rid of onerous and irrational regulations, and sell off assets, all in order to lower taxes so that people can use their resources for productive effort. No one, including the individual, the county, the state or the country, can borrow and spend their way out of lost income. The way out is to create and produce some value that one can live on, either directly or through exchange with other people for the things one needs. Political freedom, including economic freedom, is the underlying requirement for this to occur.

Ask yourself: Is this happening now? If not, why not? And the answer is somewhat different than it was in the 30s. Then socialism was an erroneous, but inspired ideal. Its failure was not perceived until the fall of the Berlin Wall whereupon the whole world could see the utter poverty, the imprisoned and tortured people who didn't agree with the system, the starving of millions and the massive waste of resources - all caused by government planning and control. Given that socialism is a failure, what is different now? The motive? Looks like it could be. So, what is the motive now?

Hint: The Greater Good is not the motive. That is the cover, the drapes that soften the window so the unvarnished truth is not realized.

Think about it.

A Citizen's Letter to Her Senator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elena Carter

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

Bail Bill Upholds Unreality - Kill It

Here is an article by Robert Tracinski who writes the TIA Daily column. I'm copying it whole as it is great to get your feet on the ground in terms of free market principles. Also, I must say that I am shocked regarding Bernake's complete disregard for what has the free market work. After reading this and his attempt at Czardom, I'm persuaded the guy is a psychopath.

TIA Daily • October 1, 2008
Kill the Bailout
The Government Can't Rewrite Reality

The House of Representatives deserves praise for taking swift action to avert a growing economic crisis—by not approving the trillion-dollar financial bailout plan.

The bailout bill was blocked Monday by a rebellion among House Republicans, who voted two-to-one against a plan they consider a step down the "slippery slope to socialism," in the words of Texas Representative Jeb Hensarling.

They are absolutely correct, and the 133 Republicans who voted to stop this coup against the financial markets—not to mention some of the 95 Democrats who may have balked for similar reasons—need to find the courage to stand firm. That's especially true since the Senate is likely to vote today to approve the bailout.

The Senate is supposed to serve, in James Madison's analogy, as the "cooling saucer" for the hot tea served up by the House—but in this case, it is the House that has remained cool and refused to panic. That's because the hysterical demand for a bailout didn't come up from the people; it came down from the elites in Washington and Manhattan. The House is reflecting the sensible skepticism coming up from the folks on Main Street who don't want to pay the bills for bailing out Hank Paulson's former colleagues on Wall Street.

Some cold, realistic scrutiny of the bailout is desperately needed because this plan is not just an attack on the free market. It is an attack on reality. The financial crisis was caused by more than a decade of using government power to rewrite the facts of reality and override the judgment of the market, and the bailout just offers more of the same fantasy economics.

Congress wanted everyone to be able to get a mortgage to buy a home, regardless of income, credit history, or ability to save for a down payment. The name for this contradiction was "affordable housing," an initiative aimed at providing the benefits of home ownership to those who could not, in fact, afford it. So when the market concluded that low-income borrowers could not meet the credit requirements for mortgages, the Clinton administration invoked trumped-up charges of racism to expand enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, bullying banks into dropping as "arbitrary" such old-fashioned credit standards as proof of income. And when the market balked at the increased credit risk created by these loans, Congress backed the expansion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, government-sponsored enterprises that used federally guaranteed money to buy up the increasingly risky mortgages.

At every point, when the market sent the message that reality would not support the higher level of risk being taken on by mortgage lenders, the government used its power to override this message.

The vigorous government-created market for riskier "sub-prime" loans masked the real dangers, creating the illusion that increased profits could be obtained without increased risk—an illusion that encouraged some private lenders to follow Fannie and Freddie's lead. To be sure, some of this private risk-taking was part of the normal process of failure in a capitalist economy. A large part of the current financial upheaval originated with high-risk investment banks and hedge funds that held large amounts of mortgage-backed securities. These securities were carefully balanced against one another according to mathematical formulas that were calculated to cancel out their risks. But the mathematical formulas were new and hadn't been tested in a bear market. When the downturn came, they failed.

This is a normal part of the rough and tumble of capitalism. All of the current talk about the "failure" of the free market ignores the fact that the process of failure is a crucial benefit of the free market. In a capitalist system, high-risk firms are always trying out new and untested ideas, and failure is the messenger that tells the market which strategies work and which strategies don't. It is also an indispensable corrective mechanism that moves capital from enterprises with failing strategies to those with successful strategies.

But the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve have repeatedly short-circuited this mechanism by trying to outlaw failure. When the market sent the message that too many bad loans had been made and that this needed to be corrected by a contraction in the amount of available credit, the government wanted to avoid the unpleasant consequences of such a contraction. So the Federal Reserve papered over the facts—with a flurry of paper money—by artificially reducing interest rates and loosening up credit just when it needed to be tightened.

But that didn't change the underlying facts, and the bad investments still went bad. Yet as the market has sent the message that some firms have become over-extended and are no longer solvent, the government has still tried to avoid letting the market face the facts. The Treasury and the Fed kept trying to rewrite reality by orchestrating a series of government-backed bailouts.

Over at RealClearMarkets, Joseph Calhoun points out a crucial part of this assault on facts:

There has always been a stigma attached to borrowing directly from the Fed and for good reason. If a bank can’t get other banks to lend it money, that tells the market something about the condition of the bank in question.

Last August, Bernanke convinced three large banks to borrow at the discount window in an effort to remove that stigma. When that didn’t work, he concocted a scheme to allow banks to borrow from the Fed in anonymity via a mechanism he called the Term Auction Facility. When Bear Stearns blew up, he added the Term Securities Lending Facility for investment banks. By removing the stigma of borrowing from the Fed and hiding the identity of the borrowers, Bernanke removed important information from the market.

So the Fed's approach to potential bank failures was to try to help failing banks pretend that they weren't failing.

Or consider the SEC's ban on short sales for a list of about 700 stocks—with more companies lobbying to get themselves put on the list. Again, the whole approach of the SEC is not to prevent companies from failing, but to help them pretend that they are not failing, by outlawing trades that would tend to drive their stock prices down.

In fact, all that this sort of policy has achieved is to expand business failures. When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, for example, it had been in negotiations with several major financial institutions who were considering investing billions in a private buy-out of the firm. But they balked at making the deal because they were waiting for the Fed to offer incentives and guarantees. Thus, the Fed's yelping about how each bankruptcy of a Wall Street firm poses a risk of "systemic failure" turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the prospect of an open-ended series of bailouts is blocking all of the mechanisms by which a free market actually prevents widespread failure.

The bailout package would have the government buy out up to $700 billion worth of bad loans. But this is merely delaying the re-pricing of those loans to their proper value. Left to themselves, the holders of these loans would eventually find it necessary to sell them at pennies on the dollar; Merrill Lynch sold its bad loans at 22 cents on the dollar. Private companies could then recognize the magnitude of the loss and start to rebuild their businesses with the remaining assets they possess. But now no firm has an incentive to sell off its bad loans. Why dump them for 22 cents on the dollar when the government might buy them, a few weeks later, at 50 or 80 cents?

So instead what is going to happen is that the federal government is going to go into the financial markets and dictate which securities are worth how much. It is still unclear exactly which loans the government will buy or how much it will pay for them, so no private investor can say whether an investment will pay off or not. This is how the prospect of a government bailout blocks the private buyouts that would actually clean all of the bad debt out of the system.

Instead, this plan transforms the US Treasury into a trillion-dollar hedge fund, making investments in securities whose proper market value is unknown and promising its shareholders—us—that unlike the best Wall Street investment banks, Treasury bureaucrats really know how to make a profit on sub-prime mortgage loans. That's why probably the best comment on the bailout is an e-mail making the rounds on Capitol Hill presenting Paulson's pitch for the bailout deal—in the style of a Nigerian banking scam. "I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude," it begins. Time to hit the "delete" button.

The bailout represents more of the same problems that got us here because it is backed by all of the same people who created those problems. And I'm not just talking about Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who organized the series of ad hoc bailouts that spread uncertainty through the financial industry. Much worse is the fact that a chief negotiator for the bailout is House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, the chief sponsor of the "affordable housing" scam. And as for Barack Obama, Stanley Kurtz exposes the role played by ACORN, Obama's former employer as a "community organizer." It turns out that a big part of ACORN's "community organizing" was to use thug tactics and the threat of government regulation to intimidate banks into making high-risk mortgage loans.

Fortunately, the public has the good sense to smell that something is rotten. I just got an e-mail recounting what Virginia Representative Jim Moran told Fox News: that calls from constituents commenting on the bailout were running 50-50—50% "no" and 50% "hell, no."

The House should not simply delay the bailout bill or mitigate its worst features; that will prolong the uncertainty in the financial markets. Instead, they need to make sure that the bailout meets with firm and repeated rejection over the next week, preferably by a growing margin of votes.

It is time for the House to kill the bailout and kill it decisively.

It is time for Congress to stop the government from rewriting reality, so that the market can be free to recognize the facts, pick up the pieces of failing firms, and begin rebuilding.

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.

Basic Types of Political Systems

I use the words socialism and fascism in describing particular political systems and actions. People react to these words. Frankly, since for me they have specific meanings, I don't get upset by the words.

Political systems break down into two primary categories. One places the individual as primary and the government's purpose is to protect the individual's inalienable rights. The other places the society as primary and subjugates the individual to the needs/purposes of the society as a whole. Who determines what those needs or purposes are? Those in power. I hope you didn't think that your one vote among millions and millions determined that.

Since man is a real being who must produce the requirements of his life in order to keep his life in existence, property is a primary concern. Who controls the property is the primary way to understand the system that one is in.

The first system is called capitalism. In capitalism, all property is privately owned. Ownership means the right to use and dispose of one's property.

The second system is called statism. Here the property is controlled by the state, hence the state has the right to the use and disposal of the property. This takes several forms:

If the property is owned by the state, the system is communism. If the title of the property is in the name of the individuals and yet it is regulated by the state, the system is fascism. The use and disposal of the property. i.e. the ownership, is according to the state's laws. In these two categories, the society is the good by which all laws are justified, so they are both forms of socialism.

Statist systems divide in other ways too: If the state is a kingdom, then it is a monarchy. In this case, the king's will is the justification for laws that he decrees. If the state is a church/religion, it is a theocracy and it is God's will that is the justification for laws the church leaders decree.

Finally there is a mixture of freedom and statism known as the welfare state. This unstable system moves toward full-fledged fascism or, at some point when it is clear that it is not working, it frees up, at least for awhile.

Democracy is not a political system at all although it is bandied about as if it were. A democracy is a state which uses a systematic means of legitimizing power by the vote of the citizens. Without a Constitution (i.e., a specific set of rights, government structure and rules) in the background, a democracy would be meaningless except possibly as a distraction to keep the masses mollified.

Another current term is "progressivism." A "progressive" is a person who thinks that the government should "progress" society according to a particular purpose or values. Having government do this means that it will be done by force and thus a progressive is a fascist by another name. The origin of this term is at the beginning of the 20th century. Woodrow Wilson was the first fascist/progressive president.