The Intellectual Source of Accusations of Racism

One of the interesting and frustrating things going on in this election season is that no matter what the McCain/Palin side of the election contest says, it is labeled racist. The most ridiculous charge I've heard is that when Palin wears white, she reminds blacks of the KKK.

This tactic is so crudely obvious, that I think some people must be sitting around looking at everything through race-tinged eye wear. What is going on?

There is a philosophical root to this way of thinking. The following article, although long, goes into the philosophy behind it. If you are curious how ideas get started and then are forwarded in our culture, you will appreciate Professor Hicks observations and arguments. Further if you need intellectual ammunition in the ongoing cultural battle, Professor Hicks will hand it to you. I acknowledge and thank Professor Stephen Hicks for his work.

Although the public retorts and defenses are sounding racist, they aren't actually a function of race at all. It is a function of philosophy - particularly that branch of philosophy which deals with how man gains knowledge and can know anything - epistemology. That is why you hear whites, particularly academics, saying these things as much or more than you hear blacks saying them. The reason for this is that it is not dependent on the color of one's skin but rather on the philosophical premises that a person embraces.

The same thing is going on regarding men and women, handicapped people and non-handicapped people, gays and straights, etc. Whatever category you fall in, so the theory goes, is the cause of what you believe, value and say and you have no choice in the matter. They claim that there is no such thing as free speech - that we are all nothing more than parrots beholden to the category of person that we were born into.

This view violates some very fundamental facts of human nature - namely that you possess choice. Secondly it violates facts of what knowledge is, how we gain knowledge and the purpose of knowledge - which, by the way, is a function of being a human being. It turns everything into the social/political and casts man's relations into eternal warfare.

I do not see why there is any reason to stop with classes. Families have particular views of the world too. And then inside families, there are individuals. To postulate that one is fatalistically determined, i.e., have no choice in the matter, by one's social category is ridiculous. It is anti-human at root and denies those who adopt it their humanity - that which has them be human as distinct from the lower animals.

How many people do I know that questioned the existence of God from an early age? Many. Something about that idea didn't make sense to them as a teenager so they rejected it or qualified it with their own interpretation.

The thing of which I have been aware regarding this tactic used in the matter of race is how racist it is, not for those that don't use this method of "thinking" but for those making these statements. It is a major intellectual growth and development cul-de-sac.

It is so outrageous that a black person who uses reason and logic is deemed not black. Thus Clarence Thomas is "white." Condoleeza Rice is dismissed. Even education, as opposed to indoctrination, is considered "white." What is being dismissed is not the color of the skin per se, but the mind and rationality.

Free Speech and Postmodernism

by Stephen Hicks

(This article is adapted from the second of a two-lecture address given by Stephen Hicks at TOC's 2002 Summer Seminar. TOC=The Objectivist Society. I obtained if from The Objectivist Society website here.)

In the last lecture, we looked at those arguments that won the debate for free speech. Historically, those arguments were nested in different philosophical contexts, and they were often tailored to audiences hostile in varying degrees to free speech. So let me summarize, in contemporary language, the elements of those arguments that are still with us:

1)Reason is essential for knowing reality.
2) Reason is a function of the individual.
3) What the reasoning individual needs to pursue his knowledge of reality is, above all, freedom—the freedom to think, to criticize, and to debate.
4) The individual's freedom to pursue knowledge is of fundamental value to the other members of his society.

A corollary of this argument is that when we set up specialized social institutions to seek and advance our knowledge of the truth—scientific societies, research institutes, colleges and universities—we should take special pains to protect, nurture, and encourage the freedom of creative minds. It is therefore surprising that the greatest current threats to free speech come from within our colleges and universities. Traditionally, a major career goal for most academics has been to get tenure, so that one can say whatever he wants without being fired. That is exactly the point of tenure: to protect freedom of thought and expression. Yet today we see that many individuals who have worked for many years to get tenure and the academic freedom that goes with it are the strongest advocates of limiting the speech of others.

Sample Speech Codes

Let me offer some examples of the way that academics are seeking to limit speech through so-called speech codes. A proposed speech code at the University of Michigan forbade:

Any behavior, verbal or physical, that stigmatizes or victimizes an individual on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, creed, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, handicap or Vietnam-era veteran status. . .

At another major university, the University of Wisconsin, a hotly debated speech code warned that disciplinary actions would be taken against a student

For racist or discriminatory comments, epithets or other expressive behavior directed at an individual or on separate occasions at different individuals, or for physical conduct, if such comments, epithets, other expressive behavior or physical conduct intentionally: demean the race, sex, religion, color, creed, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry or age of the individual or individuals; and create an intimidating, hostile or demeaning environment for education, university related work, or other university authorized activity.

These two are representative of the speech codes that are being put in place in many universities and colleges around the land. The major theoreticians behind these speech codes are such prominent scholars as Mari J. Matsuda, who tends to write on behalf of Americans from Asian backgrounds; Richard Delgado, who tends to write on behalf of Hispanics and racial minorities; Catharine A. MacKinnon, who writes on behalf of women as an oppressed group; and Stanley Fish, who is in a slightly delicate position, being a white male - but who solves that problem by being sensitive to anybody with victim status.

Why Not Rely on the First Amendment?

In response to speech codes, a common reaction by Americans is to say: "Why hasn't the First Amendment taken care of all of this? Why not point out that we live in the United States and the First Amendment protects free speech, even the speech of those who say offensive things?" Of course, we should say that. But the First Amendment is a political rule that applies to political society. It is not a social rule that applies between private individuals and it is not a philosophical principle that answers philosophical attacks on free speech.

As regards the distinction between the political and private spheres, for example, note that the First Amendment says that Congress shall make no law, with respect to religion, free speech, and assembly. This means that the First Amendment applies to governmental actions and only to governmental actions. We can stretch this notion to public universities, like Michigan and Wisconsin, on the grounds that they are state-run schools and therefore are part of the government. In that way, we can say that First Amendment protection should be in place at all public universities, and I think that is a good argument to make.

But that is not the end of the matter, for several reasons. To begin with, the First Amendment does not apply to private colleges. If a private college wishes to institute some sort of a speech code, there should be nothing illegal about that as far as the First Amendment is concerned. Secondly, First Amendment protection runs up against another cherished institution within the academy: academic freedom. It is possible that a professor would want to institute a speech code in his class and that, traditionally, would be protected under his academic freedom to conduct his classes as he wishes. Thirdly, there is another argument that has widespread appeal. Education is a form of communication and association, fairly intimate in some respects, and it requires civility if it is going to work. So open displays of hatred, antagonism, or threats in the classroom or anywhere in the university undermine the social atmosphere that makes education possible. This argument implies that colleges and universities are special kinds of social institution: communities where there may be a need for speech codes.

The First Amendment does not provide guidance about the rules governing speech in any of these cases. The debates over those cases are therefore primarily philosophical. And that is why we are here today.

Context: Why the Left?

I want to point out, first, that all of the speech codes around the country are proposed by members of the far Left, even though the same far Left for many years complained about the heavy-handedness of university administrations and championed freedom from university restrictions. So there is an irony in the shift of tactics in the Left's campaign for authoritarian, politically correct speech-restrictions.

The question accordingly is: Why, in recent years, have academic Leftists switched their critique and their tactics so dramatically? I have spoken about aspects of this topic before - for example, in my two lectures on postmodernism - and I have written a book on the topic. In my judgment, a key part of explaining why the Left now advocates speech codes is that in recent decades the Left has suffered a series of major disappointments. In the West, the Left has failed to generate significant far-Left socialist parties, and many socialist parties have become moderate. Major experiments in socialism in nations such as the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and Cuba have been failures. Even the academic world has shifted sharply towards liberalism and free markets. When an intellectual movement suffers major disappointments, you can expect it to resort to more desperate tactics.

Affirmative Action as a Working Example

Let's use affirmative action as an illustration of this process, for two reasons: First, the Left has clearly faced disappointment with its affirmative-action goals. In the 1980s, the Left started to realize that it was losing the battle on affirmative action. Secondly, we are all familiar with the case of affirmative action, so it can serve as clear illustration of the philosophical principles the Left bases its goals upon; and this will enable us to see how those same principles are re-applied to the advocacy of speech codes.

The argument for racial affirmative action usually begins by observing that blacks as a group suffered severe oppression at the hands of whites as a group. Since that was unjust, obviously, and since it is a principle of justice that whenever one party harms another, the harmed party is owed compensation by the harming party, we can make the argument that whites as a group owe compensation to blacks as a group.

Those opposed to affirmative action will respond by arguing that the proposed "compensation" is unjust to the current generation. Affirmative action would make an individual of the current generation, a white who never owned slaves, compensate a black who never was a slave.

And so what we have here, on both sides of the arguments, are two pairs of competing principles.

One pair is highlighted by the following question: Should we treat individuals as members of a group or should we treat them as individuals? Do we talk about blacks as a group versus whites as a group? Or do we look at the individuals who are involved? Advocates of affirmative action argue that individual blacks and whites should be treated as members of the racial groups to which they belong, while opponents of affirmative action argue that we should treat individuals, whether black or white, as individuals regardless of the color of their skin. In short, we have the conflict between collectivism and individualism.

The other pair of competing principles emerges as follows. Advocates of affirmative action argue that partly as a result of slavery whites are now in the dominant group and blacks are in the subordinate group, and that the strong have an obligation to sacrifice for the weak. In the case of affirmative action, the argument runs, we should redistribute jobs and college acceptances from members of the stronger white group to members of the weaker black group. Opponents of affirmative action reject that altruistic standard. They argue that jobs and college acceptances should be decided on the basis of individual achievement and merit. In short, we have a conflict between altruism and the egoistic principle that one should get what one has earned.

In the next typical stage of the debate over affirmative action, two further pairs of clashing principles emerge. Advocates of affirmative action will say: "Perhaps it is true that slavery is over, and maybe Jim Crow is over, but their effects are not. There is a legacy that blacks as a group have inherited from those practices. So, contemporary blacks are victims of past discrimination. They have been put down and held back, and they have never had a chance to catch up. Therefore, in order to equalize racially the distribution of wealth and jobs in society, we need affirmative action to redistribute opportunities from the groups that have disproportionately more to groups that have disproportionately less."

The opponents of affirmative action respond by saying something like the following: "Of course the effects of past events are passed down from generation to generation, but these are not strictly causal effects; they are influences. Individuals are influenced by their social backgrounds, but each individual has the power to decide for himself what influences he is going to accept. And in this country, especially, individuals are exposed to hundreds of different role models, from parents, to teachers, to peers, to sports heroes and movies stars, and so on. Accordingly, what people whose families were socially deprived need is not a handout but freedom and the opportunity to improve themselves. And again this country especially provides both of those plentifully." So, from this side of the argument, the point is that individuals are not simply products of their environments; they have the freedom to make of their lives what they will. Instead of affirmative action, the answer is to encourage individuals to think for themselves, to be ambitious, and to seek out opportunity, and to protect their freedom to do so.

Let's abstract from this second argument another two pairs of competing principles. Advocates of affirmative action rely upon a principle of social determinism that says, "This generation's status is a result of what occurred in the previous generation; its members are constructed by that previous generation's circumstances." The other side of the argument emphasizes individual volition: individuals have the power to choose which social influences they will accept. The second pair of competing principles follows: Do individuals most need to be made equal in assets and opportunities, or do they most need liberty to make of their lives what they will?

In summary, what we have is a debate involving four pairs of principles. Those four sub-debates constitute the overall debate over affirmative action.

Now, affirmative action has, for quite a while, been on the defensive, and many affirmative action programs are on their way out. There is very little voluntary acceptance of affirmative action programs.

But if we are Leftists committed to the notion that racism and sexism are problems that must be attacked vigorously, and if we see the tool of affirmative action being taken away from us, we will realize that we must turn to new strategies. One such new strategy, I will argue, is the university speech code. So next I want to show how the issue of speech codes embodies each of these four principles on the Left side of the column—the collectivism, the altruism, the principle of social construction, and the egalitarian concept of equality.

Egalitarianism

I sometimes have a fantasy that I will play one-on-one basketball with Michael Jordan. He comes by when I am shooting some hoops, and I challenge him to a game. He accepts, and we get into the game. We even have a referee to make sure that there is no undue fouling and so forth.

But then an element of realism enters my fantasy. How would this game actually turn out? Well, we play according to the rules of basketball and Michael wins 100 to 3—one time before he got too close to me, I got a shot off and it happened to go in.

Now let's ask an ethics question: Would that be a fair game? There are two completely different answers one could give, the leftist and egalitarian answer versus the answer that you are probably thinking of. The first answer says that the game would be completely unfair because Stephen Hicks has no chance at all of winning against Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan is the best basketball player in the universe, and I am an occasional weekend player with an 8-inch vertical clearance when I jump. To make the game "fair," this answer says, we would need to equalize the radical difference in abilities that are entering into competition here. That is the egalitarian answer to the question.

The other answer says it would be a perfectly fair game. Both Michael and I chose to play. I know who he is. Michael has worked hard to develop the skills that he has acquired. I have worked less hard to acquire the lesser number of skills that I have. Also, we both know the rules of the game, and there is a referee who is impartially enforcing those rules. When the game was played, Michael shot the ball into the basket the number of times needed to earn his 100 points. He deserves the points. And I deserve my three points as well. So, Michael won the game fair and square, and I should seek out other people to play with. That is the liberal individualist answer to the question.

But if we are committed to the egalitarian notion of "fair," then we are led to the notion that in any competition we must equalize all of the participants so that they have at least a chance of success. And this is where the principle of altruism comes in. Altruism says that in order to equalize opportunities we must take from the strong and give to the weak, that is, we must engage in redistribution. What we can do, in the basketball case, is equalize by not allowing Michael to use his right hand; or if it is a matter of jumping, by making him wear weights on his ankles so that his jumping and my jumping are equalized. That is the principle of sports handicapping, which is widely used, and it entails not letting someone employ an asset so that the little guy has a chance. The other possible strategy is to give me a 90-point head start. That is, we would not take anything away from Michael that he has earned, but rather we would give me something that I have not earned. Or of course we could employ both remedies simultaneously. So, there are three approaches. (1) We can try to equalize by preventing the stronger from using an asset or a skill that he has. (2) We can give the weaker an advantage that he has not earned. Or (3) we can do both.

There is a general pattern here. The egalitarian starts with the premise that it is not fair unless the parties who are competing are equal. Then, it points out that some parties are stronger in some respect than others. Lastly, it seeks to redistribute in some way in order to make the parties equal or it seeks to prevent the stronger from using their greater assets.

Postmodern leftists apply all of this to speech and say something like the following: "Fair" means that all voices are heard equally. But some people have more speech than others, and some have more effective speech than others. So what we need to do, in order to equalize speech, is to limit the speech of the stronger parties in order to equalize or give more speech opportunities to the weaker parties. Or we need to do both. The parallel with affirmative action is clear.

Inequalities along Racial and Sexual Lines

The next question is: Who are the stronger and the weaker parties that we are talking about? Well, not surprisingly, the Left again emphasizes racial and sexual classes as the groups in need of help. The Left spends much time focusing on data regarding statistical disparities across racial/sexual lines. What is the racial and sexual composition of various professions? various prestigious colleges? various prestigious programs? Then they will argue that racism and sexism are the causes of those disparities and that what we need to do is attack those disparities by redistribution.

In some cases, the disparities that leftists find are genuine, and racism and sexism do factor into those disparities. But instead of engaging in redistribution, we should solve those problems by teaching individuals to be rational, in two ways. First, we should teach them to develop their skills and talents and be ambitious, so they can make their own way in the world. Secondly, we should teach them the obvious point that racism and sexism are stupid; that in judging oneself and others it is character, intelligence, personality, and abilities that matter; and that the color of one's skin is almost always insignificant.

To this, the postmodernists respond that the advice is pointless in the real world. And here is where the postmodernist arguments, though they have been used in the case of affirmative action, are new with respect to speech. What they do is introduce a new epistemology—a social constructionist epistemology—into the censorship debates.

The Social Construction of Minds

Traditionally, speech has been seen as an individual cognitive act. The postmodern view, by contrast, is that speech is formed socially in the individual. And since what we think is a function of what we learn linguistically, our thinking processes are constructed socially, depending on the linguistic habits of the groups to which we belong. From this epistemological perspective, the notion that individuals can teach themselves or go their own way is a myth. Also, the notion that we can take someone who has been constructed as a racist and simply teach him to unlearn his bad habits, or teach a whole group to unlearn its bad habits, by appealing to their reason—that also is a myth.

Take Stanley Fish's argument, from his book There's No Such Thing as Free Speech . . . and it's a good thing too. The point here is not primarily political but epistemological.

Freedom of speech is a conceptual impossibility because the condition of speech's being free in the first place is unrealizable. That condition corresponds to the hope, represented by the often-invoked "marketplace of ideas," that we can fashion a forum in which ideas can be considered independently of political and ideological constraint. My point . . . is that constraint of an ideological kind is generative of speech and that therefore the very intelligibility of speech (as assertion rather than noise) is radically dependent on what free-speech ideologues would push away. Absent some already-in-place and (for the time being) unquestioned ideological vision, the act of speaking would make no sense, because it would not be resonating against any background understanding of the possible courses of physical or verbal actions and their possible consequences. Nor is that background accessible to the speaker it constrains; it is not an object of his or her critical self-consciousness; rather, it constituted the field in which consciousness occurs, and therefore the productions of consciousness, and specifically speech, will always be political (that is, angled) in ways the speaker cannot know (pp. 115-16).

We are constructed socially, the postmodernists argue, and we are, even as adults, not aware of the social construction that underlies the speech we are engaging in. We might feel as though we are speaking freely and making our own choices, but the unseen hand of social construction is making us what we are. What you think and what you do and even how you think are governed by your background beliefs. (It is true that we are governed by our background beliefs but those premises are subject to correction if one is committed to growth and development, i.e., the uprooting of the premises that cause failure and unhappiness. SCB)

Fish states the point abstractly. Catharine MacKinnon applies this point to the special case of women and men, in making her case for censoring pornography. Her argument is not the standard, conservative argument that pornography desensitizes men and gets them riled up to the point where they go out and do brutal things to women. MacKinnon believes that pornography does that, but her argument is deeper. She argues that pornography is a major part of the social discourse that is constructing all of us. It makes men what they are in the first place and it makes women what they are in the first place. So, we are culturally constructed by porn as a form of language to adopt certain sex rules and so forth.

As a result of this, there is no distinction between speech and action, a distinction that liberals have traditionally prized. According to postmodernists, speech is itself something that is powerful because it constructs who we are and underlies all of the actions that we engage in. And as a form of action, it can and does cause harm to other people. Liberals, say postmodernists, should accept that any form of harmful action must be constrained. Therefore, they must accept censorship.

Another consequence of this view is that group conflict is inevitable, for different groups are constructed differently according to their different linguistic and social backgrounds. Blacks and whites, men and women, are constructed differently and those different linguistic-social-ideological universes will clash with each other. Thus, the speech of the members of each group is seen as a vehicle through which the groups' competing interests clash. And there will be no way of resolving the clash, because from this perspective you cannot say, "Let's settle this reasonably." What reason is, is itself constructed by the prior conditions that made you what you are. What seems reasonable to you is not going to be what is reasonable to the other group. Consequently, the whole thing is going to descend into a shouting match.

Speakers and Censors

Let's summarize this argument and put all of its elements together.

1) Speech is a form of social power. [Social Constructivism]
2) Fairness means an equal ability to speak. [Egalitarianism]
3) The ability to speak is unequal across racial and sexual groups. [Collectivism]
4) The races and sexes are in conflict with each other. [Racism and Sexism]
5) The stronger racial and sexual groups, that is, whites and males, will use speech-power to their advantage, at the expense of races and women. [Zero-Sum Conflict]

What we have then are two positions about the nature of speech. The postmodernists say: Speech is a weapon in the conflict between groups that are unequal. And that is diametrically opposed to the liberal view of speech, which says: Speech is a tool of cognition and communication for individuals who are free.

If we adopt the first statement, then the solution is going to be some form of enforced altruism, under which we redistribute speech in order to protect the harmed, weaker groups. If the stronger, white males have speech tools they can use to the detriment of the other groups, then don't let them use those speech tools. Generate a list of denigrating words that harm members of the other groups and prohibit members of the powerful groups from using them. Don't let them use the words that reinforce their own racism and sexism, and don't let them use words that make members of other groups feel threatened. Eliminating those speech advantages will reconstruct our social reality—which is the same goal as affirmative action.

A striking consequence of this analysis is that the toleration of "anything goes" in speech becomes censorship. The postmodern argument implies that if anything goes, then that gives permission to the dominant groups to keep on saying the things that keep the subordinate groups in their place. Liberalism thus means helping to silence the subordinate groups and letting only the dominant groups have effective speech. Postmodern speech codes, therefore, are not censorship but a form of liberation - they liberate the subordinated groups from the punishing and silencing effects of the powerful groups' speech, and they provide an atmosphere in which the previously subordinated groups can express themselves. Speech codes equalize the playing field.

As Stanley Fish says:

Individualism, fairness, merit — these three words are continually in the mouths of our up-to-date, newly respectable bigots who have learned that they need not put on a white hood or bar access to the ballot box in order to secure their ends (p. 68).

In other words, free speech is what the Ku Klux Klan favors.

Whether in opposing affirmative action or speech codes, the liberal notions of leaving individuals free and telling them that we are going to treat them according to the same rules and judge them on their merit mean reinforcing the status quo, which means keeping the whites and males on top and the rest below. So in order to equalize the power imbalance, explicit and forthright double standards are absolutely and unapologetically called for by the postmodern Left.

This point is not new to this generation of postmodernists. Herbert Marcuse first articulated it in a broader form when he said: "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left" (Herbert Marcuse, Repressive Toleration, p.109).

The Heart of the Debate

We have seen, then, what Ayn Rand often insisted upon— that politics is not a primary. The debates over free speech and censorship are a political battle, but I cannot over-emphasize the importance in those debates of epistemology, human nature, and values.

Three issues are the core of the contemporary debates over free speech and censorship, and they are traditional philosophical problems.

First, there is an epistemological issue: Is reason cognitive? Skeptics who deny the cognitive efficacy of reason open the door to various forms of skepticism and subjectivism and now, in the contemporary generation, to social subjectivism. If reason is socially constructed, then it is not a tool of knowing reality. To defend free speech, that postmodern epistemological claim must be challenged and refuted.

Second is a core issue in human nature. Do we have volition or are we products of our social environments? Is speech something we can freely generate, or is it a form of social conditioning that makes us who we are?

And third is an issue from ethics: Do we bring to our analysis of speech a commitment to individualism and self-responsibility? Or do we come into this particular debate committed to egalitarianism and altruism?

Postmodernism, as a fairly consistent philosophical outlook, presupposes a social subjectivist epistemology, a social-determinist view of human nature, and an altruistic, egalitarian ethic. Speech codes are a logical application of those beliefs.

The Justification of Freedom of Speech

In light of the foregoing, what must be defended by liberals of the contemporary generation are objectivity in epistemology, volition in human nature, and egoism in ethics. But we are not going to solve all of those problems today. My purpose here is to point out that those are the issues and also to indicate how I think that our defense of free speech should proceed. I think there are three broad points that must be made.

The first is an ethical point: individual autonomy. We live in reality, and it is absolutely important to our survival that we come to understand that reality. But coming to know how the world works and acting on the basis of that knowledge are individual responsibilities. Exercising that responsibility requires social freedoms and one of the social freedoms that we need is speech. We have the capacity to think or not. But that capacity can be hampered severely by a social atmosphere of fear. That is an indispensable part of the argument. Censorship is a tool of government: the government has the power of force to achieve its end, and depending on how that force is used it can generate an atmosphere of fear that interferes with an individual's ability to perform the basic cognitive functions he needs to act responsibly in the world.

Secondly, there is a social point. It is not simply ethical and not quite political. We get all sorts of values from each other. David Kelley has lectured extensively on this point, and I am using his categorization scheme: in social relationships we exchange knowledge values, friendship and love values, and economic trade values. Often, the pursuit of the knowledge values is conducted in specialized institutions, and discovery of truth requires certain protections within those institutions. If we are going to learn from each other, if we are going to be able to teach each other, then we need to be able to engage in certain kinds of social processes: debate, criticism, lecturing, asking stupid questions, and so on. All of that presupposes a key social principle: that we are going to tolerate those kinds of things in our social interactions. Part of the price that we will pay for that is that our opinions and our feelings are going to be bruised on a regular basis, but—live with it.

Lastly, there is a series of political points. As we saw above, beliefs and thoughts are each individual's responsibility, just as making a living and putting together a happy life are the individual's responsibility. The purpose of government is to protect individuals' rights to pursue these activities. Thoughts and speech do not, no matter how false and offensive they are, violate anyone's rights. Therefore, there is no basis for government intervention.

There is also a point to be made about democracy, which is a part of our social system. Democracy means decentralizing decision-making about who is going to wield political power for the next period of time. But we expect voters to exercise that decision-making power in an informed manner. And the only way they can do so is if there is lots of discussion and lots of vigorous debate. So, free speech is an essential part of maintaining democracy.

Finally, free speech is a check on the abuses of government power. History teaches us to worry about the abuse of government power, and one indispensable way of checking such abuse is to allow people to criticize the government and to prohibit the government from preventing such criticism.

Three Special Cases

I want next to address two challenges that the postmodern Left is likely to make to my arguments, and then return specifically to the special case of the university.

Consider first a free-speech point dear to liberal hearts: that there is a distinction between speech and action. I can say something that will harm your feelings. That I am free to do. But if I harm your body - say I hit you with a stick - that I am not free to do. The government can go after me in the latter case but not in the former.

Postmodernists try to break down the distinction between speech and action as follows. Speech, after all, propagates through the air, physically, and then impinges upon the person's ear, which is a physical organ. So there is then no metaphysical basis for making a distinction between an action and speech; speech is an action. The only relevant distinction, therefore, is between actions that harm another person and actions that do not harm another. If you want to say, as liberals do want to say, that harming the other person by shooting a bullet into him is bad, then it is only a difference of degree between that and harming the person by bad speech. It is not only sticks and stones that can break our bones.

Against that I argue as follows. The first point is true—speech is physical. But there is a significant qualitative difference that we must insist upon. There is a big difference between the breaking of sound waves across your body and the breaking of a baseball bat across your body. Both are physical, but the result of breaking the baseball bat involves consequences over which you have no control. The pain is not a matter of your volition. By contrast, in the case of the sound waves washing over your body, how you interpret those and evaluate them is entirely under your control. Whether you let them hurt your feelings depends on how you evaluate the intellectual content of that physical event.

Racial and Sexual Hate Speech

This ties into a second point. The postmodernist will say, "Anyone who thinks honestly about the history of racism and sexism knows that many words are designed to wound. And if you are not a member of a minority group, you cannot imagine the suffering that the mere use of those words inflicts on people. In short, hate speech victimizes people and so we should have special protections against hateful forms of speech—not all speech; only hate speech."

Against that I would say, first, that we have a right to hate people. It is a free country, and some people are in fact deserving of hate. Hatred is a perfectly rational and just response to extreme assaults on one's core values. The premise that we should never hate other individuals is wrong: Judgment is called for, and hateful expressions are appropriate in some cases.

But, more directly to the point of the argument here, I argue that racist hate speech does not victimize. It hurts only if one accepts the terms of the speech, and acceptance of those terms is not what we should be teaching. We should not be teaching our students the following lesson: "He called you a racist name. That victimizes you." That lesson says, first, that you should judge your skin color to be significant to your identity and, secondly, that other people's opinions about your skin color should be significant to you. Only if you accept both of those premises are you going to feel victimized by someone's saying something about your skin color.

What we should be teaching instead is that skin color is not significant to one's identity, and that other people's stupid opinions about the significance of skin color are a reflection of their stupidity, not a reflection on you. If someone calls me a goddamned white person, my reaction should be that the person who says that is an idiot for thinking that my whiteness has anything to do with whether I am goddamned or not. So, I think that the arguments for hate speech, as an exception to free speech, are simply wrong.

The University as a Special Case

Now let me return to the special case of the university. In many ways, the postmodern arguments are tailored to the university, given the priority of our educational goals there and what education presupposes. For it is true that education cannot be conducted unless minimal rules of civility are observed in the classroom. But let me make a couple of distinctions before I raise the issue of civility.

I hold with what I said initially: I agree with the distinction between private colleges and public universities. I think that private colleges should be free to institute whatever kinds of codes they wish. As for the public university, while I agree wholeheartedly with the First Amendment, I think it means universities as a whole should not be allowed to institute speech codes. That means that in the tension between the First Amendment and academic freedom, I come down on the side of academic freedom. If individual professors wish to institute speech codes in their classes, they should be allowed to do so. I think that they would be wrong to do so, for two reasons, but they should have the right to do so.

Why do I think they would be wrong? Because they would be doing themselves a disservice. Many students would vote with their feet and drop the class and spread the word about the professor's dictatorialism. No self-respecting student will stay in a class where he is going to be browbeaten into a party line. So I think that there would be a built-in market punishment for a bad classroom policy.

Beyond that, any sort of speech code undermines the process of education. Civility is important, but civility should be something the professor teaches. He should show his students how to deal with controversial issues, setting the example himself. He should go through the ground rules, making it clear that while the class is dealing with sensitive subjects the class as a whole will make progress on them only if its members do not resort to ad hominem, insults, threats, and so forth. If a professor happens to have an individual trouble-maker in the class—and the kinds of racism and sexism that people worry about are mostly matters of isolated individuals—then as a professor he has the option of dropping that student from his course on the grounds of interference with the process of education, not as a matter of ideological party line.

That point about the requirements of true education has been demonstrated time and time again. There are the famous cases historically: what happened in Athens after the execution of Socrates, what happened to Renaissance Italy after the silencing of Galileo, and hundreds of other cases. The pursuit of knowledge requires free speech. On that point, I agree with C. Vann Woodward:

[T]he purpose of the university is not to make its members feel secure, content, or good about themselves, but to provide a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, the unorthodox, even the shocking - all of which can be profoundly offensive to many, inside as well as outside its walls. . . . I do not think the university is or should attempt to be a political or a philanthropic, or a paternalistic or a therapeutic institution. It is not a club or a fellowship to promote harmony and civility, important as those values are. It is a place where the unthinkable can be thought, the unmentionable can be discussed, and the unchallengeable can be challenged. That means, in the words of Justice Holmes, 'not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.' (C. Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor Emeritus of History, Yale University, The New York Review, 1991).

That sets the university's priority of values exactly right. And, to generalize that to the objectivist point about the functioning of reason, I think that Thomas Jefferson also got it exactly right upon the founding of the University of Virginia: "This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here, we are not afraid to follow truth where it may lead, nor to tolerate error so long as reason is free to combat it."

Stephen Hicks is an associate professor and chairman of the philosophy department at Rockford College in Illinois. He is also director of the Honors Program in Liberal Arts, a great-books program that teaches the intellectual history of Western civilization.

Face of the Monster

Obama (and his campaign) has raised plenty of eyebrows with all the disconnects, denials, flip flops, lies, intimidation and showboating.

These actions are not just a politician pandering. This behavior is willful. A campaign is organized to do this.

(Why the campaign is organized to do this is exactly the issue. All of the activities where Obama was most effective in the years leading up to his running for President are the ones that he will not discuss in public. That's because they are all around Rezko, teaching ACORN to focus on the right things and say the right things to disempower the government and banks, providing the legal defense for ACORN cases to force banks to lower their lending standards and being Chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Trust who took up terrorist Ayers philosophy of education the purpose of which is to undermine standards and the existing order of capitalist America. With the Annenberg project producing no objective measurable results, Rezko in jail and his housing projects in shambles and boarded up, and the huge home mortgage scandal which ACORN and Obama fomented and drove into existence, these things are not good things for him to talk about. So he dances and dissembles with his foot nailed to the floor. This shows his real character.)

The net effect has a singular purpose: An attack on rationality - your rational mind. It's purpose is to render trying to make sense of Obama hopeless so that you will give up trying. Watch this interchange between Sean Hannity and Robert Gibbs, Obama's Communication Director.



There’s a major difference between having people on a show that allows for airing both sides of an issue than a person WORKING WITH a terrorist, a terrorist who has never repented and has repeated his wish that he could have done more bombing and destruction. Hannity in NO WAY WORKS WITH the people he doesn’t agree with. He gives them no quarter. Obama, on the other hand, says YES and embraces them by placing his time, his life force, and his reputation in their hands.

Notice how Gibbs does everything to foil Hannity and all the while acts like Hannity is irrational, concerned about something that is of no importance.

I can't think of anyone with a shred of intelligence that would do what Obama did unless he wanted to. Are we supposed to think he was stupid? Given how ambitious Obama is and how calculating he shows himself to be, I don't think so.

What we have here is a leader of Obama's Campaign lying about something that happened and then dismissing it, as created by the lie, as unimportant.

Hannah Arendt reported on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1960. She coined the phrase "The Banality of Evil." Below are a couple paragraphs of a review of Arendt's book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

"This horror is not the inherent evil of Hitler or Himmler or the sadistic camp guards. The holocaust presented these already morally bankrupt men with the opportunity to commit the evil which their consciences allowed. Of greater horror are the individuals, such as Eichmann, who were not evil per se, but who were willing to put conscience aside in order to advance within an evil system.

"As Arendt moves through the holocaust in the different countries in Western Europe and the Balkans, it becomes evident that the difference in degrees of the destruction of Jewry was not defined by the presence of potentially evil wrongdoers, but by the existence of individuals who would not put their conscience aside in order to further short-term goals. The contrast between the destruction of German Jews and the survival of the Jews of Bulgaria and Denmark can be directly traced to a commitment by the Bulgarians and Danes to save their fellow countrymen. The German Jews did not survive as the Danish and Bulgarian Jews did because Germany lacked such men of conscience."

Here's another statement about the phenomenon.

"What is shocking about Nuremberg is the ordinariness of the defendants: men who may be good fathers, kind to animals, even unassuming--yet who committed unspeakable crimes. Years later, reporting on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, Hannah Arendt wrote of "the banality of evil." Like Eichmann, most Nuremberg defendants never aspired to be villains. Rather, they over-identified with an ideological cause and suffered from a lack of imagination or empathy: they couldn't fully appreciate the human consequences of their career-motivated decisions."

We are seeing this phenomenon right before us. Gibbs smiling and acting like there is no difference between what Obama did and Hannity did. Then Alan Combs taking up the cudgel and playing the whole thing as guilt by association which it is not. Obama's purpose, character and judgment are at issue here.

The Nazi "foot soldiers" threw children into the gas chamber and behaved as if this was ordinary. That is what Gibbs and Combs are doing.

What's the difference between a terrorist and a murderer? Or shall we say, what is the difference between a Communication Director, a newscastor and a terrorist?

Morally? No difference now.

America has Passed into Dictatorship

With the passing of the bailout bill and the raising of Paulson to Economic Dictator (I just heard he plans to step down) we have passed from Freedom to Dictatorship in a matter of two weeks. Clearly we are in the process of a now bloodless coup. (Read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand for a playout of a Government takeover of the economy.)

As the details unfold, people are going to balk and be even more angry. Why? Because they have minds and they possess values - which they must - in order to survive. Whatever slack they have cut for all the shenanigans of the government regulators will now be reeled back in as they get increasingly careful about their financial and social decisions. Their values and logic will dictate it and none of us, above all a financial or political dictator, will have any say in the matter.

The coup is now going to exact its blood and treasure. And it is going to take increasing doses of naked force in order to accomplish this. When the government gets between you and and the identifications and conclusions of your mind, it can never win unless you say so. It must somehow get you to decimate your mind or it will be forced to use force.

If the Great - and possibly upcoming - Dictator Barack Hussein Obama gains the reins, this will come about sooner rather than later. (Have you noticed how much Obama is enjoying this collapse? I've seen several clips where he just jokes and smiles and then offers his bromides as to whom we are victims of now. If you read the source documents that I have posted in other blogposts, you will grasp how this is all falling into place according to his purpose. This represents the culmination of the strategy to use people's morals - like being good to the poor ala Jesus Christ - against them and then pushing the system until it overloads and breaks down.)

He is well educated in the ways of bullying and fraud and pervasive lying. He knows how to institute or shape government programs to register his voters and bully free institutions. He has used this as a primary thrust of his efforts every single time he can get away with it. He's slick now! He takes baby steps and then giant steps when appropriate.

He has already left the supposed benefactors of his tactics in worse positions than when he started - every single time. If any of those poor who he uses to justify his actions think they are going to get a free ride, the facts do not bear this out and they will be sorely disappointed. They, of course, cannot see this as they have donned the role of victim and will do everything to maintain it, including jambing stakes into both eyes.

He is a lie from top to bottom, front to back. Given his history of being attracted to Marxist, Black Liberationist, Terrorist, Communist sympathizers and tactics from his teenage years through the present, there is no way that he can be something other than who he is. He has constituted himself as The One. All his dissembling to the contrary, that front shall not be.

Barack Obama is primarily culpable in this entire mess. He has worked for it for years. His close associates have worked for it. He has pushed the Motor Voter laws which are open to fraud. Additionally, I can go right now to his website and register to vote with any name I want. All I have to do is make up a new email address, a new name, a new address and I am registered. If I live in a state that does not permit checking IDs to validate my identity, I am in like Flynn. I can spend the day going from precinct to precinct voting for Obama. States are reporting fraudulent voter registrations by the tens of thousands.

What is Obama's training for being The Dictator?

(From here unto the end of this italicized section, I have rewritten from Stanley Kurtz's article in the New York Post.)

In Chicago in 1992, Madeline Talbott, head of ACORN, an activist with extensive ties to Obama filed a precedent-setting complaint against Chicago area's Avondale Federal Bank for Savings. Within a month after the complaint, Chicago ACORN had organized its first 'bank fair' at Malcolm X College and found 16 local financial institutions willing to participate.

Two months after that, aided by ACORN organizer Sandra Maxwell, Talbott announced plans to conduct demonstrations in the lobbies of area banks that refused to attend an ACORN-sponsored national bank 'summit' in New York. She insisted that banks show a commitment to minority lending by lowering their standards on down payments and underwriting - e.g., by overlooking bad credit histories...

A September 1993 story in the Chicago Sun-Times presents her as the leader of an initiative in which five area financial institutions were 'participating' (i.e., if anyone would call being bullied participating. SCB) in a $55 million national pilot program with affordable-housing group ACORN to make mortgages for low- and moderate-income people with troubled credit histories.

The thing that was different about this program was the participation of Fannie Mae - which had agreed to buy up the loans. The pilot program 'worked,' and Fannie Mae's message that risky loans to minorities were 'OK' was sent. The rest is financial-meltdown history.

'The Woods Fund report makes it clear Obama was fully aware of the intimidation tactics used by ACORN's Madeline Talbott in her pioneering efforts to force banks to suspend their usual credit standards. Yet he supported Talbott in every conceivable way. He trained her personal staff and other aspiring ACORN leaders, he consulted with her extensively, and he arranged a major boost in foundation funding for her efforts.'

Obama consistently attacks individual rights and political freedom. Consistently!!! In fact he is such a collectivist that he doesn't possess the distinction Political Freedom. He talks as if everything is his and he has power to cause everything. He trashes free enterprise, i.e, the peace-producing trader principle, as if it were a dirty rag someone threw out along the highway. Think of everything you do of your own free will. If he is Dictator, that means nothing. You are the dirty rag. Your and my life will become increasingly circumscribed by orders from the Government or The One directly.

One idea he and Michelle especially like are Service Corps of various types. College kids will get grants to go to college but they have to give up a year of their life to Government Service. He has Service Corps for every bracket and age group. If the children singing hymns to Obama and the Obama Youth Fraternity is any indication, we will be learning Obama songs ourselves. Maybe it will be a little more Germanic where two words are put together as one: Obamasongs. (As I quipped in the first clip, at least Hitler had the decency to have the songs mention the country. Not so with the big O.)

There will be no Nice Obama. It isn't possible for a megalomaniac of this size to care about you. Who do you think you are? You must be taught obedience, the hallmark of all dictatorships. And obedience means one things - the sacrifice of your mind. We definitely are passing into a very evil period of American history.

My hope is that Americans are still too feisty and too uncontrollable for this giant noose. If there is anyplace on earth where altruist/socialist philosophies are finally going to meet their death, it will be here. Only in America.

Evil has no ultimate power and must fail. Although it can exact much suffering, one must not yield one's spirit to it. It can never be taken seriously in an ultimate sense.

Rationality, independence, integrity, honesty, justice, productiveness and pride have power.

Kids for Obama

Video from www.no-libs.com.

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.

At the Bottom There is But One Kind of Greed

Pelosi is dissembling so fast that she is almost making stuff up before it happens. (Pic above is she following the demise of the bailout bill.) She blamed this whole crisis on the Bush Administration (I blame the Bush Adminisitration for plenty in how they have handled the problem after it manifested itself too) while we watch the King Buffoons of Frank and Dodd play "cover my ass" with any new bill they could approve. (pic above is Frank and Dodd "'splaining" the bill.) Rove mentions below that he heard first hand the plan to pin this debacle on the Republicans. If that was the plan, it can get hard to keep the future and the past separate.

But along side the Fannie & Freddie problem is another one: ACORN. Now this is one hell of a story. ACORN is a criminal voter registration organization. State after state finds fraud after fraud sourced by ACORN's voter registration drives. And guess who "luuuvs" ACORN: O-BAM-A. He loves ACORN so much that he trained those community organizers how to go into a community, sweet talk them for a while until they find the right grievance and then rub that damn grievance in their faces until they are raw with rage.

That's the plan. By that time they are so solidified in their hatred of someone or some institution they feel they must vote for the Savior who will deliver them from this righteous, erroneous evil. And that is how Obama gets the votes.

On the other hand, dear Obama is sweetness and light and affability. He always seeks to calm the waters in public. Now he is creating his children's choir core to win your heart. At least Hitler had the decency to teach the kids songs about their country.



The only problem is that he violates your rights in order to do it. Obama is a crook. A very big crook by my standard of individual rights and justice based on those rights. He has the government force you to pay tax so that he can grow his voter registration machine. (Go here to register on Obama's website. Tell me, do you think this is a secure means of valid, truthful voter registration?) Never mind that you wouldn't advocate nor vote for that in a zillion years, you have to pay up anyway. This is how crooks work. They don't give you a choice. Your First Amendment rights are passe.

The advocacy of "helping the poor and powerless" is so lame that it is laughable. (Obama has left the poor and powerless in worse condition by his actions in every single project he has touched and acted on.) By our values and our ethics those who seek power over us have us by the balls. We have to let that ethic go, as a primary value, and fight for freedom more fundamentally - the right of every man to his life and the freedom to use his mind, his basic means of survival, to live it. Men will help their neighbors as they can. It is our history.

The Democrats (and McCain and Bush) are charging Wall Street's GREED as the cause of this mess. You and I know that whatever opportunity the Wall Street guys saw in the law that said they had to write sub-prime mortgages, could bundle them and sell them as securities, it originated in Washington. Without the laws and the government paying if something happened, thereby reducing the risk to zero, there never could have been this boom and now bust.

I am not saying that the "businessmen" who profited by the Government's laws are good men. Obviously their values are false when they seek money at the expense of their customers. But still, were it not for Dodd, Frank, Obama and his ACORN, and all the other hangers-on and profiteers - be it through business or campaign contributions this could not have happened. Without these politicians and their law, there would have been no cause for this effect.

Therefore, the people who have pushed people out of their homes, caused the collapse of investments that people were counting on for retirement and their kid's college educations and untold damage far greater than any "li'l ole Enron," are in Halls of Congress in Washington DC. They parade their crooked smiles and crooked asses around like they know exactly what we should do and how they are going to lead us out of this mess. There is nothing in the world that could make me believe that this is about anything beyond a little personal redemption or a big "cover my ass." In the meantime, the jackassery continues unabaited - as it must. (By the way, if I find a better explanation for the vast array of facts surrounding Obama and ACORN and the politicians who sourced this that has many people wonder what is going on, I promise you I will publish it here.)

It must continue because so far there is not one leader in that Congress that is big enough to see that they have a major credibility problem. No calls for investigation. No plans for taking responsibility. They think if they get a bill out of Congress "fixing" the financial crisis, that will be it. Integrity is never mentioned. Of course they have no idea what they are doing. Whatever it turns out to be is at best bailing wire on a jaloppy. They cannot fix it. Government planning of the economy can NEVER and WILL NEVER fix the economy. They can only VIOLATE the economy which, at root, is men being rational in offering and pursuing their values.

And, the reason this is not going to get resolved is because the entire Obama presidential possibility requires that the Democrats not be responsible for this mess. They dare not because if they were exposed, the real story would be over and so would Obama - forever. The only crook left on the grand stage would be that wooden one shepherds use pulling Obama off the stage.

The stakes are too big. After all Obama is the candidate that represents the radical Alinsky Left's moment in the sun - that moment when it finally takes down America and replaces it with a totalitarian socialist state. His name for it is SERVICE to the community or the state. That, is, after all, the plan. See here. ACORN provides the foot soldiers. Later that will be ballooned into the required Domestic Security Organization to provide for domestic tranquility. Maybe a better word is obedience.

There is but one kind of GREED at the bottom of this "bloodless" coup, which is exactly what it is: The GREED for Power and the LUST to deliver America, the beacon of individual rights and freedom for the whole world, to the dustbin of failed socialist states. This coup won't remain bloodless for long for this GREED will not hesitate to walk over corpses to achieve its aim. History instructs.

Here is a video of Karl Rove, that Republican, along with Bush, upon whom the Alinsky Left has focused its hatred, wondering what the hell is going on.

The Obama and ACORN Strategy

This article at American Thinker is a must read to understand the strategy behind Obama. It really explains a lot. Now I can see why Obama went to Germany to appear international and why he created his own "Presidential" seal and all of it. It is a purposeful effort to break down American institutions and create a totalitarian socialist state. Don't take my word for it. I've put a lot of Obama history in this blog and this article shows even more than I have been able to learn.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/barack_obama_and_the_strategy.html

I now think Obama is the bloodless coup. But it won't be bloodless for long.

I have a family member who lost $25,000 bond overnight when Lehman's collapsed. There are millions of hard-working people who are losing their life savings and retirement savings because of the dastardly deeds of the likes of Dodd, Frank, Obama and Raines. These bastards need to be put behind bars. Otherwise, we are going down if this kind of corruption and criminality is allowed to go free and run the country. This entire mess is primarily Democrat-constructed and Democrat-maintained.

Request for Moral Action

I have written my Congressmen - two Senators, Chambliss and Isakson, and one Representative, John Lewis - in the US Government regarding the Crisis of Confidence in the US Government. I urge you to write yours.

Dear Senator,

We may have a financial problem that is great. But there is a far greater problem that you have than that. You have a CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE in the US Government. When you stand idly by and allow Barney Frank and Chris Dodd go on national TV and represent what is going on in the name of the US Government, you may as well put the mafia up there. Don’t you get it?

You need to call for the IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION of both Frank and Dodd in the halls of Congress and on national TV now. Can you not be ACCOUNTABLE for the damage they have caused and are now causing?

We know that Frank and Dodd were at cause in the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They have been the flag wavers of more destruction than any free market institution ever could be or has been. And yet, you don’t root out the problem and take a stand for what is right.

Further ACORN, charged and prosecuted with many voter fraud crimes, is a Far Left radical organization. To think that you would violate the First Amendment of the US Constitution, forcing people to pay for an organization that is clearly political and does not represent their views is a crime in itself. There can be NO TAXPAYER MONEY go to ACORN.

Sincerely yours,
Principlex
Atlanta, Georgia

The Crisis of Confidence

The great crisis is not the financial crisis although that is bad enough. It is The Crisis of Confidence in the US Government.

The two men in Congress who were the big players in the horrendous con game of Fannie and Freddie and who are as upside down as all hell when it comes to these two institutions are Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. Every news program clip I see, these two are still speaking and talking as if they are the authorities on this new "bailout" bill. They are not. All we know is that they are the authorities on how to make sure their ass is covered.

Every time one of them says anything, the confidence meter goes lower and lower. Since apparently the Congress has no idea what the cause of this is, I think it is time for some individual in the Congress who has some clout - perhaps Maverick McCain - should go on national TV and clear up this matter.

He should state: "We have a crisis of confidence in the US Government." This must be corrected now. Therefore I am calling for the stepping down of both Dodd and Frank. Their voices at this time given they are they major cause of the problem we are dealing with are doing nothing except lowering the people's evaluation of our work. From now on, no more."

Then he should go on to Part II of how to generate confidence. The bill is to have NO EARMARKS and NO PROVISIONS FOR ACORN!!!

That would spark plenty of fireworks and some real soul searching on Capitol Hill. And this is EXACTLY what is needed!

Democrat Rebuff of Fannie & Freddie Clean-up

This video speaks for itself. Caught red-handed!



And I'm supposed to think the Democrat Party is the best Party (maybe that should be a small "p") for the economy?

In the bailout bill being hammered out and festooned with earmarks right now, a huge grant of any profit (20%) is scheduled to go to ACORN, supposedly a low-end housing organization. What it really is a voter registration organization and its purpose it to register Democrats. It has been charged with illegal activities in a number of states. This is more corruption - pure and simple. Definitely it is an infringement of your right to free speech. Tax money extracted from you by force and given to an organization that may not express your views is a whopping injustice. By what Right? This is "Taxation without Representation!!"

!! N O P A S S !! N O P A S S !!

The CRISIS IN CONFIDENCE in the US Government worsens!

Is Alinsky's Principle Turning on Obama?

Saul Alinsky is Obama's primary mentor. He was powerful because he had a specific plan of action for gaining power. Alinsky was a psychopath, pure and simple. He appeals to people who want power and are angry. Hillary liked him and so does Obama.

"Teaching hatred for the normal majority is the key to power for radicals. But Alinsky taught that you can't easily hate millions of people. To do that effectively you need a one-person scapegoat to focus all your hatred on. 'Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.' (Saul Alinsky) That is the politics of personal destruction, and it doesn't matter if the target is black like Clarence Thomas, or a woman like Sarah Palin, or a severely wounded war veteran like John McCain." (or a President, George Bush - SCB) (This quote from here.)

The internet is abuzz with articles about Obama's underhanded dealings and being the thug behind the scenes. This was mentioned a few weeks ago related to other people and organizations but had died down. Now it is back.

And what a perfect place to put all the frustration and outrage over the general government incompetance. It's clear to me there is a crisis of confidence in the US Government. Two of the biggest crooks, Frank and Dodd, at the heart of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco are making pronouncements, yelling in response to every question, as if they have moral authority - which they don't.

McCain supporters are increasingly frustrated. Their hope has been that given all the mess maybe McCain would have enough belief in freedom to at least forestall the complete capitulation of our relatively free society to liberal fascism and the socialist state.

All of this is now accentuating Obama's fascism and willingness to operate via threats of force. What follows is a list of links that I gleaned from the internet, thanks to a friend sending them to me. Further most of these links came from http://www.instapundit.com/, a middle-of-the-road website written by a law professor.

Start with this one about Alinsky and his tactics.

Then read this from the UK on how Obama undermined our government's negotiations with Iraq leaving them confused.

Then how about this one on how Obama is silencing the voice of Gun Owners. Also here.

One comment on a blog: "I fear that under the Obama administration, the lawyers sending these letters will be government employees."

And here is evidence of that already. Two elected officials are protecting the Obama campaign and only the Obama campaign. How unjust is that?

And here is a video showing how prosecutors and sheriffs are becoming part of the Obama's truth squad. And even the Justice Department is working for Obama.

Here in Reason Magazine's website is an article explaining why Obama is vulnerable on the Second Amendment. Notice how, in Obama's world, you have no rights. That means that you are not and independent human being who gets to live his life as he chooses. You are the property of the Government and the politicians get to decide. Your life is to be negotiated by someone else. Whatever that is, it ain't American and individual rights.

Or how about this Alinsky tactic to undermine free speech?

Here's an article regarding the NRA's response.

Obama's attempt to interrupt and silence a Chicago radio show back in August when Stanley Kurtz who investigated the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was featured.

And just a couple days before that stories were run on how Obama threatened the major TV stations who might run the ad produced by the American Issues Project. I detailed that here.

Although the Left may have overriden your voice at the US Justice Department, if you want to file a complaint, the numbers are at the link.

When is the US Government Going To Take Repsonsibility?

The US Government has nationalized AIG and the debt of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This amounts to the nationalization of the financial sector of our economy.

And - We are dismayed, despairing and angry. All that is talked about is the taxpayer covering everything. With a stroke of the pen, each of us were enslaved more. Because of the government we all work harder to get ahead or we suffer a loss in our standard of living. Why aren't those "criminals" and the Congressmen who fostered this in jail and destitute? They did far, far more damage than Enron ever did. Thank's Uncle Sam, you bastard!

What we need is Justice. And one thing we can count on is that we will never get it from the US Government.

The US Government is choking on paper. Debt. Where is its responsibility in the matter? Why aren't we hearing plans to sell off vast tracks of the land it lays claim too? Why aren't we hearing plans to sell off g-zillions of its assets to pay what it has committed itself to?

This is what a normal person has to do if income slows or stops and he comes up short. He has to generate it some way. But not the US Government. Oh no, no, no! It passes a law which means one thing: Get out the gun, point it at the heads of the taxpayers and tell them they got to pay up. Why? "We have to have it. It's an emergency."

This is worse than disgusting. Now we have a criminal at every single US citizen's door. The government is the primary initiator of force in this country, bar none. All criminals are petty by comparison.

The only agreement you and I have with the government is that they guarantee my and your right to life, my and your liberty, my and your property and my and your right to live for our own happiness. Inside that everything gets taken care of.

So the agreement is broken. And it was the US Government that broke it. And don't tell me that people don't get it. They do. Many know exactly what is going on and there is not a single person in the Government with a voice that can be trusted. This is how bad it is.

So what do I do if a client breaks an agreement? I stop work. There has to be a new agreement between the two of us otherwise it is over forever.

Isn't it now obvious that there is nothing that the government touches that it doesn't wreck? Why? Force. It forced Fannie and Freddie to loan to people who couldn't afford it. They lowered their underwriting standards to do it. I bet you would like your mechanic to lower his standards when fixing your car. Or the airline mechanic to lower his standards. Or your surgeon to lower his standards. What kind of insanity is this?

And now McCain and Obama are calling for more oversight? Give me a break! Oversight from the government when it comes to business is the worst affliction any honest businessman can have happen. Don't believe for a second it is worth a tinker's damn. It isn't. If you have any standards based on knowledge and truth, you have to get out of business otherwise you become one of them. You become their apologist. "I'm sorry, I had to do it because the government requires me to." Oversight has as much relevance as Marie Antoinette's prouncement, "Let the eat cake." With a flick of the wrist, "Let them have oversight and stricter regulation."

The best you can get if you become successful is being branded "greedy." That's the government's and their apologists' payment. Nice huh? If you fall for this tripe, you deserve it.

Now what? Who knows. I guess it is every man for himself. And it won't change until the government lives by the same laws of human nature that govern all of us and puts down that goddammed gun except to catch or hold a person who has initiated force.

Is Free Enterprise Over?

The free market is under attack on every flank. In the minefield of opinions, it is essential to define the free market and capitalism.

"In a free economy, where no man or group of men can use physical coercion against anyone, economic power can be achieved only by voluntary means: by the voluntary choice and agreement of all those who participate in the process of production and trade. In a free market, all prices, wages, and profits are determined -- not by the arbitrary whim of the rich or of the poor, not by anyone's 'greed' or by anyone's need -- but by the law of supply and demand." - - Ayn Rand, Capitalism the Unknown Ideal, 1966.

Right now, the free market does not exist in America in any of the major markets: Education, medicine, building and planning, energy, money and finance, transportation and the legal profession to name a few. Even small businesses are increasingly regulated and licensed. And beyond that political correctness has made it illegal in many cases to even express a thought. We definitely do not have a free market.

Whatever we have been living in for the last 90+ years is the afterglow of a free market, not a free market. With the formulation of the Federal Reserve Bank and the passing of the income tax law, the free market took a body blow and it has never returned to the realm of American human affairs. Certainly the increase in the unfree market has been more or less gradual. The other body blows were in the 30s, the 60s and increasingly this century.

Today, September 17, 2008, in the Atlanta Journal Constitution Cynthia Tucker, editor, published her editorial: "Private enterprise worship exposed."

"The high priests of capitalism are in sackcloth and ashes, their belief in markets shattered, their catechism of risk-taking renounced. From Wall Street to Detroit, once-devout believers in unfettered private enterprise are running from their religion. Now that their greed has brought the economy to the brink of depression, they want government help.

"What happened to those masters of the universe? What happened to their handmaidens, the Republican politicians who denounced government regulation and read from the holy scriptures as recorded by Ayn Rand?

"This week, sensing shifting political winds, John McCain took to criticizing those Wall Street schemers, imbuing his speeches with a populist rhetoric intended to make you believe he’s always been a firm supporter of government regulation. On Monday, as the Dow was plummeting, McCain was the change agent, the reformer:

"'The regulatory system is broken … We’ve got to catch up the regulatory bodies to make sure that there is the proper oversight and regulation and transparency. That is vital.'

"Actually, that is laughable. In March, McCain told The Wall Street Journal, “I am fundamentally a deregulator. I’d like to see a lot of the unnecessary government regulations eliminated.”

"In a speech a few weeks later, he argued that our approach “should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”
. . . . .

"So are the masters of the universe who created the vast Ponzi scheme that has entangled Wall Street, Main Street and markets around the world. After decades of fighting off government as intrusive, rigid, bureaucratic and downright dumb, financial titans are begging for taxpayer-backed bailouts.

"After the quasi-bailout of Bear Sterns, they were aghast when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson refused to bail out Lehman. And they're still betting that the government will come to the rescue whenever another giant company is about to collapse, as it apparently is poised to do in the case of AIG.

"Wall Street kings are not the only ones begging for bailouts. Detroit automakers have also stuck their hands out, proposing that government fork over $50 billion to prop them up. They spent decades fending off efforts from Congress to improve fuel efficiency, insisting that American motorists only wanted huge gas-guzzlers. Now that they can’t sell those SUV-ehemoths, they’re staring at the possibility of financial collapse.

"Perhaps the pendulum is finally swinging back to a widespread recognition that government has a role to play in regulating markets, protecting consumers and providing a social safety net. That lesson comes at a very high cost: lost jobs, ruined retirement portfolios and added taxpayer debt to pay for bailouts.

"Unfortunately, many experts believe the end is not yet in sight; it may be many months before the markets hit bottom and the economy starts a vigorous recovery. But there may be a small benefit in this burgeoning catastrophe: The worship of unfettered private enterprise has been exposed for what it is — just another cult."

Miss Tucker is a very second rate mind for sure. In the world of concepts, one must always define his terms and distinguish what he is writing about from what it is not. Given that Miss Tucker does not do this, she turns out to be nothing but a hack with an opinion. So what! Welcome to the multitudes, Cynthia.

The truth is what is happening with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and others proves the unfree market is a colossal failure. It proves nothing about the free market. Those who should be in "sackcloth and ashes" are those who think you can get away with regulating markets. "Mother Nature," meaning the eternal nature of human being in this case, simply won't allow it.

What Cynthia does not realize is that free markets and free minds are corollaries. When she leaps atop the heap of the jeering crowd, she is advocating the regulation of her mind too.

Another thing she doesn't realize is that markets go with being human. All you can do is allow them via political freedom or drive them underground to a black market. This woman definitely loves slavery!!!

Neither of the candidates advocate freedom in its essentials. It is an idea that is barely known in America let alone the rest of the world at this time. It has never fully existed here or anywhere. The basics underlying it have not been learned and realized as workable yet. But they have been discovered and formulated and interest in them is growing.

Community Service

Listen to both campaigns this season. My, oh my, oh my.

Up to this time, Community Service, often along with a fine, is a punishment, a restriction on your freedom that you receive if you commit a low level crime. The punishment amounts to the time and effort you spend and the fact that you HAVE to do it in order to fulfill the sentence the judge handed you.

Are we now supposed to believe that Community Service is something else if required by the government? How can anything you HAVE to do be a service? Even it is voluntary and you are shamed into it, wouldn't that be the same thing as HAVING to do it?

No one is going to have to wait until the end of life to see if they went to hell, they will be living it soon.

On Friday, Whoopi Goldberg asked John McCain, when he talked about interpreting the Constitution intended by the Founding Fathers, if she should be worried about slavery. Little did she realize at the time that we all better be worried about slavery. Government instituted Community Service, along with a zillion other mandates, is slavery.

Which part of your day or weekend do you want to give up? What kind of corruption is going to ensue as everyone tries to get around this one?

Given this talk, in four years or less we won't have an immigration problem. We will have an emigration problem.

Theft in America

Theft is rampant in America. With the exception of petty thieves, some con-artists and hustlers (although I think that distinction is being lost as political parties place them at the top of their lists of people who can win public office) people who steal are considered good.

A thief for the common good, the public good, the poor and least among us, the good of the environment, so-called public safety, anything too important for some individual to control and a host of other justifications is a GOOD man. How could this be?

About three weeks ago, I ordered Inherit the Wind from Netflix. It didn't come within the short turn-around time they normally provide so I told them I hadn't received it. Netflix graciously sent another copy. The day after I told them, I received Inherit the Wind in the mail. Two days later I received Inherit the Wind again.

After a day passed, I sent the first Inherit the Wind back to Netflix. I hadn't watched it, but I still had the second copy they sent. In the meantime they continued sending me movies from my queue.

Yesterday I viewed Inherit the Wind . Good movie. The movie was so good that I started thinking of the friends I would like to have see it. I thought about sending them this copy that I had. Netflix wouldn't notice, I thought, since I had already returned Inherit the Wind and they had resumed business as usual with me.

I basked in the pleasure I could cause in another. I thought of the "thank you" and good will I would receive from my friend. We could share our thoughts and feelings about the movie. What fun that would be. Further, I could advance the principle of the right to free speech and thinking that is soooo important to me. What a lovely world I would create.

Then I remembered. The movie isn't mine. I'm able to conveniently rent movies from my home and for less than Blockbusters because someone invested his money to buy these movies so I could rent them. And because he makes a profit, my tax money isn't required to make sure he has a place to sleep and some food to eat.

I proudly sent the movie back.

There are a couple points to make from this story.

1. If I thought being "good" to be what I did for others, being a thief in this case would be acceptable behavior. In fact, it might be so acceptable that I wouldn't even notice that I was stealing. If I thought creativity, production of values, an independent mind taking risks and my agreements/contracts with others important I would send the movie back. Since I possess volition, I get to decide. A man is known for his choices and we call this character.

Where in our culture does this "doing good for others" ethic come from? I'm not talking about giving someone you value a hand. I'm not talking about giving someone something in order that they give you or your product consideration. I'm talking about doing good for others as an end, a good, in itself. I'm talking about doing good for others in order to show yourself and others that you are a good person - so you think highly of yourself. If you really want to reach the apotheosis of being good, you do good for others at your own expense. You sacrifice. You sacrifice yourself.

Where is self-sacrifice good? Well, Jesus sacrificed his life on the cross for others. The poor woman of the Bible gave her last pennies for the good of others. This is the primary source of this ethic - Christianity. Because of the ethic of self-sacrifice theft is considered good and made possible. Whole states are formed and justified on this basis.

2. What if you had a thief in the house where you lived. Every time you went to use that which is yours, you couldn't be sure that it would be there. Maybe the thief would have stolen it. You had used the energy of your life earning the money to buy the things you have, but you had no guaranteed use and disposal of these things.

What would this do to your life? How would you feel? What would you decide about life? About people? What actions would you take if you lived in this condition?

Today, our culture in America condones theft bigtime. People wonder why Americans are mad as hell. Disapproval of the President and Congress is breaking records. Is it any wonder?

And it is not just theft of your money. Your children are stolen and sent to public schools where they are inculcated in the justification of theft. E.g., multiculturalism is good. Why? Because of ethnicity and skin color and because all cultures are declared equally valid and healthy. Character, an individual attribute, is not mentioned. Sacrificing your values is what is important.

Your intelligence and thinking is stolen and bent to the dictates and regulations of the government agencies. How many times have I provide parking for the handicapped when a handicapped person would never come to or have use for a particular type of business - a ballroom dance club, e.g.

Your future is stolen. Your life is stolen. All because of this single ethic - self-sacrifice.

Listen to the politicians. Who among them isn't fully righteous that they have the right to steal and keep stealing from you? Not a paragraph passes from their lips, the lips of Obama, McCain, Biden, Palin, Hillary, Bill, Bush, on and on and on, that is not based on justified theft - sacrifice. They count on your self-sacrifice otherwise none of this could, by virtue of cause and effect, be happening. Truly we have inherited the wind.

You simply wouldn't buy most of their products and program if you had a choice. If you had a choice, you could only blame yourself if you let such a critter in your house.

If theft has such a corrosive power in human relationships and society in general, then institutionalized theft is a supreme evil. We really have no choice, if we choose life, but to reduce government to its essentials and extirpate institutionalized theft.

There is no doubt in my mind that government provides something fundamentally important to human life. Protection from invaders, police to stop initiations of force and fraud and courts in which to settle disputes.

The government exists by agreement, not by force. The agreement is the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - the only agreement anyone has with the government so long as they stay within America's borders.

Like all of us, the government has to EARN its right to exist every day of its life. Theft in America is turning us into devils and ruining our lives. It must stop!

This Woman's Character Inspires Me

From the Women in Leaderhip Forum recorded by Newsweek and published on YouTube, August 29, 2008


Palin: Motherhood, Childhood Influences and Gender as an Issue


Palin: Hillary and the Perceived Whine


Palin: The Reluctant Beauty Queen


Palin: Alaska Corruption 'Embarrassing'

An Integrated Republic

They tell you they are not going to tax your family.

No, they're just going to tax "businesses"! So unless you buy something from a "business", like groceries or clothes or gasoline ... or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small "business", don't worry ... it's not going to affect you.

They say they are not going to take any water out of your side of the bucket, just the "other" side of the bucket! That's their idea of tax reform.

My friends, we need a leader who stands on principle.
-- Fred Thompson, Keynote speaker, RNC, September 2, 2008

This metaphor says it all - in economics, in justice, in cultural values - whatever takes root in our society.

Just as slavery in the 1800s exacted its toll on the whole country, anyone who is not free to forge his purpose out of hardship or out of success cannot rise far abiding slavery. All live in and dance around the diminished possibility and spirit of one of their kind. When one man is not allowed by force to be a man in the fullest sense of the word - in the sense that he is the captain of his soul - no man can.

The idea that one can take from the freedom of the people in one half of the bucket to increase the freedom of the other half of the bucket is folly - pure and simple. It can't be done

How, is it said, can it be done? By instituting slavery. Taxation is Forced Labor for multitudes of programs you never chose nor would ever choose. It didn't work in the 1800s and it won't work in the 2000s.

Political freedom, including economic freedom, is how you fill the bucket. But some think with small minds.

LIMITED
I am riding on a limited express,

one of the crack trains of the nation.

Hurtling across the prairie into blue

haze and dark air go fifteen

all-steel coaches holding a thousand people.

(All the coaches shall be scrap and rust

and all the men and women laughing

in the diners and sleepers shall

pass to ashes.)

I ask a man in the smoker where

he is going and he answers: "Omaha."

Carl Sandberg, The Chicago Poems, 1916

Referendum on One's Sense of Life

This election is coming down to a referendum on the candidates' "sense of life." A sense of life is a sub-conscious appraisal of man and of existence.

Which do you choose?

The candidate that whines and parades his own and other people's sores as a virtue and offers excuses when he doesn't accomplish the results he said he was going to accomplish, or the candidate who takes what life deals him/her in stride and accomplishes real results?

The candidate who obfuscates on everything and works hard to not let you know who he is or the one that clarifies and is willing to let you know everything about who he/she is?

The candidate who deals with people to be manipulated and used, or the candidate who will offer herself for investigation if you think she did something wrong?

The candidate who is afraid of what you will think of his past such that he has thrown overboard his supporters and "friends" and isolated himself, or the one who is not afraid of his/her past and has plenty of real support and is not isolated?

The candidate who has to seek the support of unthinking mobs counting on their numbers to affirm his validity, or the candidate who is willing for you to judge him/her on his merits?

The candidate who has trouble conveying his patriotism by his actions and his past when there should be no doubt about the issue, or the candidate who without a doubt is patriotic?

Given that the candidates are so starkly different in this issue, one’s vote this year is also a referendum on one’s own sense of life.

We get to choose. Which will it be?