This is the very best lecture I've seen on how to advance liberty. Leonard Read shaped his life for discovering how people learn about liberty and to becoming a person who lives to advance it. This is moving, inspiring, eye-opening.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Will The People Call America to Account?
This fall's election will tell the tale for America. Will the people call our politicians to account and restore integrity with America's purpose or not?
I THINK THEY WILL to the degree they can at this point in time.
And what will be the verdict?
We will assert some form of our love of freedom, clear that we are not willing to give it up. It may have ennobled moments; it may be mangled in places, but it will be this assertion none the less. Perhaps sweeping aside the things that don't work will be our biggest achievement as we buy time to get our heads together - collect our thoughts and arguments so we can be strong for our liberty once again.
So what will be swept aside?
The Democratic Party as we know it will be dead for at least a generation.
People, myself included, and others I talk to, will never again in their lives vote Democrat. It is one thing to have a President and Congress that do the wrong things and even bad things. It is another to foist upon the American people a President who hates America and does not have her in his heart. This betrayal cannot live in the hearts of the Americans I know. As a consequence, Hillary may as well go play her flute to the moon. She's finished. All of them are.
The Democrats will either be a Far Left party (America's version of a Communist or Socialist Party) and get few votes because people are clear they don't want you. Or it will send the Far Left packing into some splinter group.
Government planning of the economy, which by the way, has not been even the pretense of the Democrat's actions, has failed. The Democrats have looted the economy, another name for redistribution. They could care less whether it works. Even Castro, much to the chagrin of Michael Moore, I'm sure, said this week that central planning and socialism have not worked for Cuba.
People who stay in the know have known that socialism in any form is a failure ultimately and finally since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the installation of some freedom in Communist China. The consequences in Greece have now collapsed any pretense that the Welfare State is the proper mixture of freedom and slavery. The truth is now in: Government fingers in the economy are toxic. Period.
Other things being realized are:
1) GOVERNMENT REGULATION is another form of SLAVERY. You can't have some person whose only purpose is to boss you around directing your life and you remain a human being in the full sense of the word. It kills creativity doornail dead.
2) Elitism and double-standard morality (the entitlement attitude) do not work. They are a throw-back to the "Us vs. Them" mentality, the zero-sum game of the pre-Enlightenment days. The just man, the man who wants equality under the law, despises those premises. Free trade, voluntary trade, works - and rocks.
3) Racism as a tactic of intimidation is over. It's been worn out. Not every objection is because a person is racist. If someone calls a person a racist, its about to become laughable and it is almost there. Collectivism is ignorant and passe. Only elitists think that way. People are individuals and we know that.
4) Thug politics, politics by manipulation, is out. Obama is going to be the last of the basically ignorant, smooth-talking con men (liars) for power for awhile. Being real, true and honest is IN and what people are looking for. This is an individual quality. No political Party, City, University, race or ethnic group has a claim on this quality. It has to be earned. In the meantime, avoid Chicago unless you like being a second class citizen manipulated by thugs.
5) Post-modernism as the mother-lode of ideas is out. It's dead. In fact all the philosophies descended from Kant will be re-looked at and discarded or recast in terms of the objective. Combine this with anti-elitism and Harvard will have to struggle to regain its former repute or become an outpost for antiquated PC dictates which serve arthritic elitists. We need people who know. But they have to earn their status. There is no elite group who by right gets to direct things. A PhD may open a door. It doesn't grant you staying power.
6) The sycophant press is finished. People will find the reporters they trust on the internet. The press is the major reason America blundered into this mess. The press didn't do its job and they will now be punished. Justice is like that. It's cosmic and not personal although it seems to know exactly who deserves what.
Whatever happens, the direction is not back to some conservatism which itself struggles with arthritic joints. It's ahead to the Second American Revolution - the one that puts America on a moral base consistent with the vision of the Founders of this country. That moral base is ethical egoism - rational self-interest - the only moral code that is discovered by science and works for the happiness that is yours for the earning, and builds a sane society, a joy to be part of.
I THINK THEY WILL to the degree they can at this point in time.
And what will be the verdict?
We will assert some form of our love of freedom, clear that we are not willing to give it up. It may have ennobled moments; it may be mangled in places, but it will be this assertion none the less. Perhaps sweeping aside the things that don't work will be our biggest achievement as we buy time to get our heads together - collect our thoughts and arguments so we can be strong for our liberty once again.
So what will be swept aside?
The Democratic Party as we know it will be dead for at least a generation.
People, myself included, and others I talk to, will never again in their lives vote Democrat. It is one thing to have a President and Congress that do the wrong things and even bad things. It is another to foist upon the American people a President who hates America and does not have her in his heart. This betrayal cannot live in the hearts of the Americans I know. As a consequence, Hillary may as well go play her flute to the moon. She's finished. All of them are.
The Democrats will either be a Far Left party (America's version of a Communist or Socialist Party) and get few votes because people are clear they don't want you. Or it will send the Far Left packing into some splinter group.
Government planning of the economy, which by the way, has not been even the pretense of the Democrat's actions, has failed. The Democrats have looted the economy, another name for redistribution. They could care less whether it works. Even Castro, much to the chagrin of Michael Moore, I'm sure, said this week that central planning and socialism have not worked for Cuba.
People who stay in the know have known that socialism in any form is a failure ultimately and finally since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the installation of some freedom in Communist China. The consequences in Greece have now collapsed any pretense that the Welfare State is the proper mixture of freedom and slavery. The truth is now in: Government fingers in the economy are toxic. Period.
Other things being realized are:
1) GOVERNMENT REGULATION is another form of SLAVERY. You can't have some person whose only purpose is to boss you around directing your life and you remain a human being in the full sense of the word. It kills creativity doornail dead.
2) Elitism and double-standard morality (the entitlement attitude) do not work. They are a throw-back to the "Us vs. Them" mentality, the zero-sum game of the pre-Enlightenment days. The just man, the man who wants equality under the law, despises those premises. Free trade, voluntary trade, works - and rocks.
3) Racism as a tactic of intimidation is over. It's been worn out. Not every objection is because a person is racist. If someone calls a person a racist, its about to become laughable and it is almost there. Collectivism is ignorant and passe. Only elitists think that way. People are individuals and we know that.
4) Thug politics, politics by manipulation, is out. Obama is going to be the last of the basically ignorant, smooth-talking con men (liars) for power for awhile. Being real, true and honest is IN and what people are looking for. This is an individual quality. No political Party, City, University, race or ethnic group has a claim on this quality. It has to be earned. In the meantime, avoid Chicago unless you like being a second class citizen manipulated by thugs.
5) Post-modernism as the mother-lode of ideas is out. It's dead. In fact all the philosophies descended from Kant will be re-looked at and discarded or recast in terms of the objective. Combine this with anti-elitism and Harvard will have to struggle to regain its former repute or become an outpost for antiquated PC dictates which serve arthritic elitists. We need people who know. But they have to earn their status. There is no elite group who by right gets to direct things. A PhD may open a door. It doesn't grant you staying power.
6) The sycophant press is finished. People will find the reporters they trust on the internet. The press is the major reason America blundered into this mess. The press didn't do its job and they will now be punished. Justice is like that. It's cosmic and not personal although it seems to know exactly who deserves what.
Whatever happens, the direction is not back to some conservatism which itself struggles with arthritic joints. It's ahead to the Second American Revolution - the one that puts America on a moral base consistent with the vision of the Founders of this country. That moral base is ethical egoism - rational self-interest - the only moral code that is discovered by science and works for the happiness that is yours for the earning, and builds a sane society, a joy to be part of.
Friday, September 10, 2010
A Guest Editorial for September 11
In Defense of Western Civilization
Opinion Editorial by Marsha Enright & Gen LaGreca - Sep 10, 2010
As September 11th approaches, it is a fitting time to consider the true nature of the societies that collided that day in 2001. We must assert the moral superiority of Western civilization, or lose it entirely.
As September 11th approaches, Americans remember the morning in 2001 when the World Trade Center turned to rubble. It is a fitting time to consider the nature of the civilizations that collided that day — and how to defend ours.
In their quest to establish a worldwide caliphate, radical Islamists invoke morality, claiming they have God’s sanction for performing their barbarous acts.
To defend Western civilization, we, also, need to invoke morality. But although the world envies the wealth we’ve achieved, it is widely seen as the product of soulless materialism, of unbridled “greed,” of unscrupulous self-indulgence.
What moral claim, then, can we make for our way of life?
To understand the moral values of the West, let’s turn to its beginning. In her prescient 1943 work of political philosophy, The God of the Machine, Isabel Paterson chose as the symbol of Western man a figure from Ancient Greece: Pytheas. This enterprising merchant left his homeland to explore Britain and beyond, seeking tin to make bronze. Insatiably curious, Pytheas also discovered the relationship between the moon’s phases and the tides, and was the first to describe the aurora and other phenomena.
Pytheas epitomizes the Western spirit: a self-directed man whose free will determines his life’s course, a thinker who employs reason and science to understand the world around him, and a producer who seeks to sell goods in peaceful trade.
From its founding, America was intended to be the country where Pytheas could flourish — the first nation established to protect the life, liberty, and property of the individual. It did so by curbing government power over the peaceful activities of its citizens.
In this, the contrast between America and radical Islam could not be greater.
Whereas Thomas Jefferson exhorts us to “Question with boldness even the existence of a God,” militant Islam kills people for apostasy.
Whereas James Madison proclaims a man has “a right to his property” and equally “a property in [all of] his rights,” Palestinian Islamists strap suicide belts on five year-olds, seizing their young lives to fight ancient vendettas.
Whereas the Declaration of Independence affirms America’s devotion to life, Osama bin Laden declares: "We love death. The U.S. loves life. That is the difference between us two."
“The excellence of the West” lies in its “respect for the human being, the recognition of his individuality, the liberty it has granted him,” observes Saudi Shura Council member and Muslim reformist Ibrahim Al-Buleihi.
“Humans are originally individuals,” he continues, “but cultures (including Arab culture) have dissolved the individual in the tribe, sect, or state.” It is only “with the diffusion of philosophical ideas from [Ancient] Greece” that “the human being became an individual of value for himself . . . and not merely a means for others.” (Profile of Al-Buleihi, The Aafaq Foundation, July 6, 2010)
Thus, in our civilization, a person is born free to live for his own sake and to pursue happiness. In radical Islam, a person must obey a central authority and sacrifice his life to its aims. Which society is better?
Granted the West’s superiority, why is radical Islam advancing? Author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, cites “an active propaganda campaign” in which “the Saudis invested at least $2 billion a year over a 30-year period to spread their brand of fundamentalist Islam.” (Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2010)
Why aren’t we passionately defending our civilization? Certainly, money isn’t the obstacle. Is it because we don’t understand the nobility of our individualist foundation, including the virtue of private advancement and profit?
We must never forget that we carry the legacy of Pytheas: a people of free will, free minds, and free enterprise. Our spectacular prosperity is not our dishonor, but the glory of our liberty.
It is said that Ground Zero is “sacred ground.” In truth, all of America is sacred ground — because the individual is sacred here.
We must assert the moral superiority of our civilization — or lose it to our enemies.
Marsha Familaro Enright is president of the Reason, Individualism, Freedom Institute, the Foundation for the College of the United States. Gen LaGreca is author of Noble Vision, an award-winning novel about the struggle for liberty in health care today.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
The Deadly Hand of Our Politics
Going to an Alpha Chi Alpha sorority’s event at Atlanta University last night to have people running for political office tell us who they are and what they stand for, I was struck by one thing. Everyone except one was screaming UNCLE at today’s problems. To the man, they gave us a sob story. They started by telling us how they had failed at government education. Our children are less educated than they need to be and if we don’t do something about it, businesses won’t want to come to Georgia to establish their business. We are just "gonna" be too dumb down here.
Then they told us that because of the lack of funds, police departments are being cut. Criminals are running loose to the point where our communities are no longer viable places to live. We are just too cheap down here.
Then we learn (and all know) that Georgia is suffering massively from the loss of jobs and that people simply are unable to make a living here. By this time we were all sobbing uncontrollably.
And how do we fix this? More money. Georgia’s governments have to find more money. The politicians who were there and have been in office told us that they’ve been trying to find more money but it is hard to come by. It just isn’t available.
Oh my, oh my, what are we to do?
One told us that Georgia has a lot of pine trees and that the way out of this is green jobs – jobs which will convert those renewable pine trees to useful matter. Another told us that we need the light rail system, that the absence of that is preventing Georgia from attracting businesses and jobs. One told us we have to find more money to take care of children who find themselves in dire circumstances – from crime, from broken homes, from death of a parent or guardian. (I wasn’t clear how this was going to solve our problems, but someone apparently thinks it does.) The solutions came rolling out. Everyone was very sincere. Don’t tell me I saw yawning and heard snoring!
Am I the only one clear that we are talking about a major institution – Georgia government – that is broke and begging for money? Are we so blinded by this all-encompassing institution that we are willing to let it force us to eat the foods it wants, buy health insurance we don’t need, pay it some money before I can cut your fingernails, force us to send our neighbors’ kids to school, force us to pay for people who don’t work. Force, force, force and more force. So what is the answer to human life, the thing that makes it all work? Force?
Do you thrive when you are forced to do something? Are you filled with the thrill of living if someone is forcing you? Does it occur to anyone that it might just be force itself that is the problem?
Force is something that must be used judiciously with human beings. Given their particular consciousness, they don’t do well if they don’t get emotionally committed to their own projects. Thriving is certainly out of the question. If they succumb to allowing themselves to be bossed around (known as regulated), they become the walking dead, life reduced to the lowest level.
When I say judiciously, I mean that one can never initiate it against another human being and can only use it to stop another’s initiating it against you or another person. In other words, when government uses force to stop the initiation of force, it is our friend. When it initiates force, it is our enemy. And, today, government is initiating force against us in every aspect of our lives.
Humans do not do well when we accept and put up with being forced by the government. We find ourselves either sapped of our energy or left with the angry coals of allowing ourselves be treated less than who we are. The evidence for this is all around the globe.
So this places us in the presence of a principle which can make a difference for us. The government should only use force to control, i.e., retaliate against, the initiation of force by a citizen, a group of citizens or an outside invader. When we abandon the initiation of force, life thrives and prospers. When we indulge it, it shrivels and dies.
The one candidate who came up with something different, to his credit, was Dan Barber, businessman, co-founder of The Order of the Heldhigh Torch, and now candidate for Lieutenant Governor on the Libertarian Ticket. “Because we are operating under an incorrect conception of the role of government, we are destroying ourselves.” Rather than the government paying for everything and running everything and having to take all of this money out of whatever the citizens may have, what if the government backed away from providing anything except justice – except stopping initiated force.
What then would our world look like? Given that we have provided so much with the government heavy on our back, what would be possible if it weren’t?
This, I’m sure, is just the start of many questions. But at least they are the good questions – the right questions. Let’s start asking these questions. What would be possible with freedom?
Then they told us that because of the lack of funds, police departments are being cut. Criminals are running loose to the point where our communities are no longer viable places to live. We are just too cheap down here.
Then we learn (and all know) that Georgia is suffering massively from the loss of jobs and that people simply are unable to make a living here. By this time we were all sobbing uncontrollably.
And how do we fix this? More money. Georgia’s governments have to find more money. The politicians who were there and have been in office told us that they’ve been trying to find more money but it is hard to come by. It just isn’t available.
Oh my, oh my, what are we to do?
One told us that Georgia has a lot of pine trees and that the way out of this is green jobs – jobs which will convert those renewable pine trees to useful matter. Another told us that we need the light rail system, that the absence of that is preventing Georgia from attracting businesses and jobs. One told us we have to find more money to take care of children who find themselves in dire circumstances – from crime, from broken homes, from death of a parent or guardian. (I wasn’t clear how this was going to solve our problems, but someone apparently thinks it does.) The solutions came rolling out. Everyone was very sincere. Don’t tell me I saw yawning and heard snoring!
Am I the only one clear that we are talking about a major institution – Georgia government – that is broke and begging for money? Are we so blinded by this all-encompassing institution that we are willing to let it force us to eat the foods it wants, buy health insurance we don’t need, pay it some money before I can cut your fingernails, force us to send our neighbors’ kids to school, force us to pay for people who don’t work. Force, force, force and more force. So what is the answer to human life, the thing that makes it all work? Force?
Do you thrive when you are forced to do something? Are you filled with the thrill of living if someone is forcing you? Does it occur to anyone that it might just be force itself that is the problem?
Force is something that must be used judiciously with human beings. Given their particular consciousness, they don’t do well if they don’t get emotionally committed to their own projects. Thriving is certainly out of the question. If they succumb to allowing themselves to be bossed around (known as regulated), they become the walking dead, life reduced to the lowest level.
When I say judiciously, I mean that one can never initiate it against another human being and can only use it to stop another’s initiating it against you or another person. In other words, when government uses force to stop the initiation of force, it is our friend. When it initiates force, it is our enemy. And, today, government is initiating force against us in every aspect of our lives.
Humans do not do well when we accept and put up with being forced by the government. We find ourselves either sapped of our energy or left with the angry coals of allowing ourselves be treated less than who we are. The evidence for this is all around the globe.
So this places us in the presence of a principle which can make a difference for us. The government should only use force to control, i.e., retaliate against, the initiation of force by a citizen, a group of citizens or an outside invader. When we abandon the initiation of force, life thrives and prospers. When we indulge it, it shrivels and dies.
The one candidate who came up with something different, to his credit, was Dan Barber, businessman, co-founder of The Order of the Heldhigh Torch, and now candidate for Lieutenant Governor on the Libertarian Ticket. “Because we are operating under an incorrect conception of the role of government, we are destroying ourselves.” Rather than the government paying for everything and running everything and having to take all of this money out of whatever the citizens may have, what if the government backed away from providing anything except justice – except stopping initiated force.
What then would our world look like? Given that we have provided so much with the government heavy on our back, what would be possible if it weren’t?
This, I’m sure, is just the start of many questions. But at least they are the good questions – the right questions. Let’s start asking these questions. What would be possible with freedom?
Taxes Should Be Cut - But Not for the Wealthy!
And what, Mr. President, did we, the people, get from this pronouncement?
Speaking for no one but myself, I got that it doesn't pay to succeed - to be wealthy. I got that you seek to punish the wealthy even though they are in a position to be the most helpful for the economy to recover and thrive.
I got that if a person creates jobs - which the wealthy with money to invest do - he will be punished. Only those who do not generally create jobs should be rewarded with tax cuts.
Now, tell me, Mr. Obama, what is wrong with this picture? If you say "nothing," then what ARE you up to?
Speaking for no one but myself, I got that it doesn't pay to succeed - to be wealthy. I got that you seek to punish the wealthy even though they are in a position to be the most helpful for the economy to recover and thrive.
I got that if a person creates jobs - which the wealthy with money to invest do - he will be punished. Only those who do not generally create jobs should be rewarded with tax cuts.
Now, tell me, Mr. Obama, what is wrong with this picture? If you say "nothing," then what ARE you up to?
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque - the Final Answer
My Final Answer, the one to end this discussion, regarding the fate of the Ground Zero mosque:
"The United States Government re-declares its purpose to protect the individual rights of the people of the United States of America. There shall be no competition with this purpose inside the borders of this country. Sharia Law, which arrogates unto itself the right to determine the life, death and punishments of people living inside the borders of the United States is illegal.
"The Mosque at Ground Zero then, if it wants a home in the United States, shall align itself with the purpose of this government and protect, not violate the rights of the citizens of the United States in accordance with our laws. Failure to do so will result in its immediate shut down and the prosecution of all parties who commit crimes."
__________________________________________________________
Including blocking the streets!
__________________________________________________________
And this every Friday in New York City no less!
Islam is not a good neighbor. None of this by some outside religion would be possible in the countries where they dominate. They use the peaceful methods of Ghandi and MLK in service of jihad just as they use women and babies as shields in battle. When the West can overcome its horror at their methods, their power will be snapped like a twig.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
And What is the Problem With Shariah Law?
This article appears on the World Net Daily website today. I post a few quotes.
Shariah for Dummies
Posted: August 27, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Nonie Darwish © 2010
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf claims that the U.S. Constitution is Shariah compliant. Let us examine below a few laws of Shariah to see if Imam Rauf is truthful or a fraud:
1. Jihad, defined as "to war against non-Muslims to establish the religion," is the duty of every Muslim and Muslim head of state (caliph). Muslim caliphs who refuse jihad are in violation of Shariah and unfit to rule.
2. A caliph can hold office through seizure of power, meaning through force.
3. A caliph is exempt from being charged with serious crimes such as murder, adultery, robbery, theft, drinking and in some cases of rape.
4. A percentage of Zakat (charity money) must go toward jihad.
5. It is obligatory to obey the commands of the Caliph, even if he is unjust.
6. A caliph must be a Muslim, a non-slave and a male.
. . .
8. A Muslim who leaves Islam must be killed immediately.
9. A Muslim will be forgiven for murder of: 1) an apostate, 2) an adulterer, and 3) a highway robber – making vigilante street justice and honor killing acceptable.
. . .
11. Shariah never abolished slavery or sexual slavery and highly regulates it. A master will not be punished for killing his slave.
12. Shariah dictates death by stoning, beheading, amputation of limbs, flogging – even for crimes of sin such as adultery.
13. Non-Muslims are not equal to Muslims under the law. They must comply with Islamic law if they are to remain safe. They are forbidden to marry Muslim women, publicly display wine or pork, recite their Scriptures or openly celebrate their religious holidays or funerals. They are forbidden from building new churches or building them higher than mosques. They may not enter a mosque without permission. A non-Muslim is no longer protected if he leads a Muslim away from Islam.
. . .
16. Banks must be Shariah compliant, and interest is not allowed.
17. No testimony in court is acceptable from people of low-level jobs, such as street sweepers or bathhouse attendants. Women in low-level jobs such as professional funeral mourners cannot keep custody of their children in case of divorce.
This guarantees that a practicing Muslim will always be a pain in the ass to govern. They will never stand for being a good neighbor and however they behave will be but a pretense until they are in control. SCB
18. A non-Muslim cannot rule even over a non-Muslim minority.
Shariah Law hard on homosexuals. SCB
19. Homosexuality is punishable by death.
And women. SCB
20. There is no age limit for marriage of girls. The marriage contract can take place any time after birth and consummated at age 8 or 9.
21. Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband's obligation to support her, and gives him permission to beat her and keep her from leaving the home.
22. Divorce is only in the hands of the husband and is as easy as saying, "I divorce you," and becomes effective even if the husband did not intend it.
23. There is no community property between husband and wife, and the husband's property does not automatically go to the wife after his death.
24. A woman inherits half what a man inherits.
25. A man has the right to have up to four wives, and she has no right to divorce him even if he is polygamous.
26. The dowry is given in exchange for the woman's sexual organs.
27. A man is allowed to have sex with slave women and women captured in battle, and if the enslaved woman is married, her marriage is annulled.
28. The testimony of a woman in court is half the value of a man.
29. A woman loses custody if she remarries.
30. To prove rape, a woman must have four male witnesses.
31. A rapist may only be required to pay the bride-money (dowry) without marrying the rape victim.
32. A Muslim woman must cover every inch of her body, which is considered "Awrah," a sexual organ. Not all Shariah schools allow the face of a woman exposed.
33. A Muslim man is forgiven if he kills his wife at the time he caught her in the act of adultery. However, the opposite is not true for women since he "could be married to the woman he was caught with."
The law that has a practicing Muslim unable to be a business partner, marriage partner or even a good neighbor - as we are seeing in the attitude of Imam Rauf. SCB
34. It is obligatory for a Muslim to lie if the purpose is obligatory. That means that for the sake of abiding with Islam's commandments, such as jihad, a Muslim is obliged to lie and should not have any feelings of guilt or shame associated with this kind of lying.
The above are clear-cut laws in Islam decided by great imams after years of examination and interpretation of the Quran, Hadith and Muhammad's life. Now let the learned Imam Rauf tell us what part of the above is compliant with the U.S. Constitution.
_________________________________________________________
Nonie Darwish is the author of "Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law" and founder of Former Muslims United.
_________________________________________________________
Shariah for Dummies
Posted: August 27, 2010
1:00 am Eastern
By Nonie Darwish © 2010
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf claims that the U.S. Constitution is Shariah compliant. Let us examine below a few laws of Shariah to see if Imam Rauf is truthful or a fraud:
1. Jihad, defined as "to war against non-Muslims to establish the religion," is the duty of every Muslim and Muslim head of state (caliph). Muslim caliphs who refuse jihad are in violation of Shariah and unfit to rule.
2. A caliph can hold office through seizure of power, meaning through force.
3. A caliph is exempt from being charged with serious crimes such as murder, adultery, robbery, theft, drinking and in some cases of rape.
4. A percentage of Zakat (charity money) must go toward jihad.
5. It is obligatory to obey the commands of the Caliph, even if he is unjust.
6. A caliph must be a Muslim, a non-slave and a male.
. . .
8. A Muslim who leaves Islam must be killed immediately.
9. A Muslim will be forgiven for murder of: 1) an apostate, 2) an adulterer, and 3) a highway robber – making vigilante street justice and honor killing acceptable.
. . .
11. Shariah never abolished slavery or sexual slavery and highly regulates it. A master will not be punished for killing his slave.
12. Shariah dictates death by stoning, beheading, amputation of limbs, flogging – even for crimes of sin such as adultery.
13. Non-Muslims are not equal to Muslims under the law. They must comply with Islamic law if they are to remain safe. They are forbidden to marry Muslim women, publicly display wine or pork, recite their Scriptures or openly celebrate their religious holidays or funerals. They are forbidden from building new churches or building them higher than mosques. They may not enter a mosque without permission. A non-Muslim is no longer protected if he leads a Muslim away from Islam.
. . .
16. Banks must be Shariah compliant, and interest is not allowed.
17. No testimony in court is acceptable from people of low-level jobs, such as street sweepers or bathhouse attendants. Women in low-level jobs such as professional funeral mourners cannot keep custody of their children in case of divorce.
This guarantees that a practicing Muslim will always be a pain in the ass to govern. They will never stand for being a good neighbor and however they behave will be but a pretense until they are in control. SCB
18. A non-Muslim cannot rule even over a non-Muslim minority.
Shariah Law hard on homosexuals. SCB
19. Homosexuality is punishable by death.
And women. SCB
20. There is no age limit for marriage of girls. The marriage contract can take place any time after birth and consummated at age 8 or 9.
21. Rebelliousness on the part of the wife nullifies the husband's obligation to support her, and gives him permission to beat her and keep her from leaving the home.
22. Divorce is only in the hands of the husband and is as easy as saying, "I divorce you," and becomes effective even if the husband did not intend it.
23. There is no community property between husband and wife, and the husband's property does not automatically go to the wife after his death.
24. A woman inherits half what a man inherits.
25. A man has the right to have up to four wives, and she has no right to divorce him even if he is polygamous.
26. The dowry is given in exchange for the woman's sexual organs.
27. A man is allowed to have sex with slave women and women captured in battle, and if the enslaved woman is married, her marriage is annulled.
28. The testimony of a woman in court is half the value of a man.
29. A woman loses custody if she remarries.
30. To prove rape, a woman must have four male witnesses.
31. A rapist may only be required to pay the bride-money (dowry) without marrying the rape victim.
32. A Muslim woman must cover every inch of her body, which is considered "Awrah," a sexual organ. Not all Shariah schools allow the face of a woman exposed.
33. A Muslim man is forgiven if he kills his wife at the time he caught her in the act of adultery. However, the opposite is not true for women since he "could be married to the woman he was caught with."
The law that has a practicing Muslim unable to be a business partner, marriage partner or even a good neighbor - as we are seeing in the attitude of Imam Rauf. SCB
34. It is obligatory for a Muslim to lie if the purpose is obligatory. That means that for the sake of abiding with Islam's commandments, such as jihad, a Muslim is obliged to lie and should not have any feelings of guilt or shame associated with this kind of lying.
The above are clear-cut laws in Islam decided by great imams after years of examination and interpretation of the Quran, Hadith and Muhammad's life. Now let the learned Imam Rauf tell us what part of the above is compliant with the U.S. Constitution.
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Nonie Darwish is the author of "Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law" and founder of Former Muslims United.
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Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Has Islam Already Beaten America?
Notice that we are besieged by the Ground Zero mosque story. It is constantly on the news and the Imam gets on every TV in the country and makes one outrageous statement after another. He says we have more blood on our hands than Al Qaeda, that we are the most dangerous killers on the planet, etc., etc. We may as well have a poison spewing, anti-American machine sitting in the living room of every household.
And with every moment that we construe this mosque and the Muslims in terms of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, we miss the point. The point is that the 9/11 attack and all the terrorist activities in the United States and Europe in the past 10 years minimum are in the name of Islam. That's a fact.
So, there should be no free passes for Islam and I don't give a damn what they say about their rights. The US Government's job is to protect our individual rights inside the borders of the United States. In order to do its job, it needs to be the gatekeeper. It doesn't let any yahoo in here who isn't willing to be a good neighbor and operate by our laws.
The Muslim religion as now constituted is not a candidate for having mosques in this country. Why? Because it advances Sharia Law and that is a political act, not just speech nor religion. When it sets aside Sharia Law as something it seeks to institute here, then it is welcome. And our government needs to say that straight out and be done with it. If the s--t hits the fan, so be it. It needs to.
If there are moderate Muslims who can show that they are not interested in establishing Sharia Law here, then they need to speak out and voice an opinion different from the current spokesmen for the Ground Zero mosque. If that doesn't happen, I think we should treat these people as the children they are and relegate them all to the same decision. No dice.
The hardest thing to face during this Obama administration is that we the people have been abandoned by our government. It does nothing for the people - maybe a few cronies and partisan groups - but that's it and that is not governance. That's special interest Chicago thug politics. And how disgusting is that.
And with every moment that we construe this mosque and the Muslims in terms of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, we miss the point. The point is that the 9/11 attack and all the terrorist activities in the United States and Europe in the past 10 years minimum are in the name of Islam. That's a fact.
So, there should be no free passes for Islam and I don't give a damn what they say about their rights. The US Government's job is to protect our individual rights inside the borders of the United States. In order to do its job, it needs to be the gatekeeper. It doesn't let any yahoo in here who isn't willing to be a good neighbor and operate by our laws.
The Muslim religion as now constituted is not a candidate for having mosques in this country. Why? Because it advances Sharia Law and that is a political act, not just speech nor religion. When it sets aside Sharia Law as something it seeks to institute here, then it is welcome. And our government needs to say that straight out and be done with it. If the s--t hits the fan, so be it. It needs to.
If there are moderate Muslims who can show that they are not interested in establishing Sharia Law here, then they need to speak out and voice an opinion different from the current spokesmen for the Ground Zero mosque. If that doesn't happen, I think we should treat these people as the children they are and relegate them all to the same decision. No dice.
The hardest thing to face during this Obama administration is that we the people have been abandoned by our government. It does nothing for the people - maybe a few cronies and partisan groups - but that's it and that is not governance. That's special interest Chicago thug politics. And how disgusting is that.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Mr. Everything - Mr. Nothing
Cartoon by John Cox.
Is Obama everything or is he nothing? Or simply evil? I wouldn't care except that he can force his way on all of us and that ain't right.
First he's multi-racial, so he's black, no he's white, he's everything - but then he's neither. He's whichever until it comes to accountability and then he's the other race.
He was raised a Muslim, now he's a Christian, he's everything - but then, he's not really either. In Washington he doesn't go to church. Maybe he's an atheist. Hmm, a nothing?
He's supposedly an American, although none of us are quite sure about that. He certainly doesn't act like an American. He kisses the rings and asses of everyone except Americans. He tries to act like he's a citizen of the whole world, but who wants him? Anyone who would claim him would find he would have to work to not be them. I asked an African if he was an African. He said, "No, he's certainly not an African."
He sounds like he wants to build the world but what has he built? He destroys relationships right and left and isn't building new ones. He fritters our wealth away to worthless recipients - worthless because they cannot build it into something that would sustain them. I read yesterday where his State Department is spending millions for the building and rehabilitation of mosques in the Middle East, southern Europe and Africa. Aren't they at war with America?
Or remember when he was the Illinois Senator who postured that he was everything - except that he could not take a stand on a tough issue and would push the "present" button? That happened almost a 130 times. Mr Everything transformed to Mr. Nothing.
He entered the gulf oil spill matter as our savior. The gulf healed itself and our only cost was the damage done by Obama. He did his best to ruin the oil industry there. First he was everything and then he was nothing - now wait, a minute, he was a negative everything.
First he tells us that the Constitution is lacking because it only lists negative rights. He then stands for the negative rights for our enemies - the Muslims who have yet to own their spiritual connection to 9/11 - and that is something he would never do for us citizens. Isn't it interesting that the Imams want to make use of our negative rights, those things listed in the Constitution that Obama thinks are its flaw? They could give a damn about his so-called positive rights.
He's transparent, no, he's murky. I see; no, I don't. Screw it.
He's metrosexual. Good suits. Perfect everything. Is that masculine? Feminine? Both? Nothing? Hmmm.
He won because everyone mapped their view of him, their hope for him, on him. Now we are pissed. Betrayal reigns.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Ground Zero Mosque?
President Obama has come out in support of the right of Muslims to have a mosque on their private property. Although we in America take it for granted that we have the right to use our property as we wish, we are beginning to learn that is not the case - unless, of course, you are a Muslim, whereupon the President lets us know that they have that right. The rest of us undergo way too many stupid, irritating regulations that do nothing other than stop the use of one's intelligence.
What is wrong with this picture? Why should the Muslims not be able to use their property as they wish?
Use of property is not a primary. It is subject to moral law, the moral principles that grant validity to the political principles of the State. In the United States where every man has a right to his life while living in society, it is immoral, and illegal, for a man to use his property to concoct the means necessary to murder his neighbor, i.e., to deprive him of his fundamental piece of property, his life.
The 9/11 debacle was in the name of Allah, the Muslim god. It was done for the glorification of Islam and Allah. To allow an enemy to erect a monument next to the site of the destruction they caused is obscene. Not until the Muslims give up their right to kill other people for their religious reasons can they be allowed to spread their word in America. Only in this era when morality has been pushed from the scene would it ever be possible to give this mosque a pass. I say, Islam (meaning the political equivalent of that) gets its mosque when the political entities who advocate it surrender to the United States - and not until then.
Beyond this, Islam is not simply a religion in the meaning of that term applicable in the United States. Here a religion means that one may organize and advocate and teach principles to live by. However, people in the name of their religion have no right to judge people and then administering severe punishments and even death sentences if the followers do not follow their rules. Although some may admire Islam for sticking to its principles, it is forever damned because it is acting on the wrong principles - principles which are anti-human life.
A human being possesses his life which is dependent upon his rational faculty. He has to be able to make mistakes in order to learn. This is an individual process and is necessary for all people. Provided a person hasn't initiated force against another, he must be able to make mistakes and pay for the damages - real damages, i.e., not to one's weird view of his honor. Burying a person up to his neck and throwing stones at his head until his skull is crushed is not appropriate punishment. Honor killings are immoral, evil, and should be renamed, "dishonor killings" because they bring dishonor to all the individuals who sanction such an institution.
Following Obama's support of the Ground Zero Mosque, he stepped back, stepping into an even bigger "cow pie." He said he wouldn't be the one to tell the Muslims that it was the wise thing to do. Thanks, O, you barbarian.
Obama is America's president. His job more than any other is to be a political leader - which means, be a leader such that the society as constituted by the principles which generated this country are maintained and the society continues. He is failed utterly at this task. I mean, he failed so badly that it is unconscionable. Without any reference to the abhorrent evil of Islam in jihadist practice, he sanctioned it. I am finally and absolutely clear that Obama is not interested in being a leader for the United States. He has no inclination toward it.
Frankly, given that 9/11 has Muslim stamped all over it and he could not take a stand for America when he took an oath to protect the Constitution and the country, I think he committed an impeachable offense. He deserves to be removed from office for treason.
P.S. I see that the Germans shut down a Hamburg mosque where the 9/11 attackers met. Here.
What is wrong with this picture? Why should the Muslims not be able to use their property as they wish?
Use of property is not a primary. It is subject to moral law, the moral principles that grant validity to the political principles of the State. In the United States where every man has a right to his life while living in society, it is immoral, and illegal, for a man to use his property to concoct the means necessary to murder his neighbor, i.e., to deprive him of his fundamental piece of property, his life.
The 9/11 debacle was in the name of Allah, the Muslim god. It was done for the glorification of Islam and Allah. To allow an enemy to erect a monument next to the site of the destruction they caused is obscene. Not until the Muslims give up their right to kill other people for their religious reasons can they be allowed to spread their word in America. Only in this era when morality has been pushed from the scene would it ever be possible to give this mosque a pass. I say, Islam (meaning the political equivalent of that) gets its mosque when the political entities who advocate it surrender to the United States - and not until then.
Beyond this, Islam is not simply a religion in the meaning of that term applicable in the United States. Here a religion means that one may organize and advocate and teach principles to live by. However, people in the name of their religion have no right to judge people and then administering severe punishments and even death sentences if the followers do not follow their rules. Although some may admire Islam for sticking to its principles, it is forever damned because it is acting on the wrong principles - principles which are anti-human life.
A human being possesses his life which is dependent upon his rational faculty. He has to be able to make mistakes in order to learn. This is an individual process and is necessary for all people. Provided a person hasn't initiated force against another, he must be able to make mistakes and pay for the damages - real damages, i.e., not to one's weird view of his honor. Burying a person up to his neck and throwing stones at his head until his skull is crushed is not appropriate punishment. Honor killings are immoral, evil, and should be renamed, "dishonor killings" because they bring dishonor to all the individuals who sanction such an institution.
Following Obama's support of the Ground Zero Mosque, he stepped back, stepping into an even bigger "cow pie." He said he wouldn't be the one to tell the Muslims that it was the wise thing to do. Thanks, O, you barbarian.
Obama is America's president. His job more than any other is to be a political leader - which means, be a leader such that the society as constituted by the principles which generated this country are maintained and the society continues. He is failed utterly at this task. I mean, he failed so badly that it is unconscionable. Without any reference to the abhorrent evil of Islam in jihadist practice, he sanctioned it. I am finally and absolutely clear that Obama is not interested in being a leader for the United States. He has no inclination toward it.
Frankly, given that 9/11 has Muslim stamped all over it and he could not take a stand for America when he took an oath to protect the Constitution and the country, I think he committed an impeachable offense. He deserves to be removed from office for treason.
P.S. I see that the Germans shut down a Hamburg mosque where the 9/11 attackers met. Here.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
No, Shirley! Let's Try That One More Time!
The story this week is that of Shirley Sherrod talking about her judging people by race and transforming to a person who judges them by class.
Beep!
Both wrong Shirley! Both lead to the same consequences: No freedom and the theft of one man's life (I know it looks like a benefit at first) at the expense of another man's life - as public policy.
The Obama Administration immediately cast itself into a deeper HELL by falling all over itself to apologize for its quick judgment. Whoops! Another quick judgment! And just as bad!
Mr. Intelligence jumped from the racism of Sherrod to the thieving of Sherwood. So Robin Hood is the good?
Puh-leaze! If that's the case then it ought to be quite alright to relieve Obama of his millions. And Soros of his. And let me see how many there are that ought to cleanse their souls.
Not only is this pure hypocrisy as advocacy, it is simply wrong. To succeed, to excel, to achieve, and yes, to become wealthy is something that a person ought to want if he is actually seeking to better himself. Money is one measure. It's not the only one. Michael Jordan is an example of wealth - in basketball talent and works. Michelangelo is an example of wealth - in artistic talent and works. Others are example of wealth - in marketing talent and works, in entertainment talent and works, in manufacturing talent and works, etc.
No wealth, no future. So what Sherrod did by robbing the rich and giving to the poor was rob the poor man of his future. The underlying lesson was to be rich meant he would be robbed and probably no better off if he were to become rich. "Oh well, being rich was never my thing anyway."
None of this is America as conceived. None of it. It is as foreign to America as the Mandarin of China or Bantu of South Africa. Here, every man is protected in his life. He can work and earn property and live his life. It's his. He has a right to his life - ALL OF IT. Not a tiny piece of it. All of life and all that he sees is possible for life. This is America.
The thing that America used to do well but has literally been taxed out of doing is taking care of those that need a helping hand. Once the government started doing this, it has grown an industry of its own and it is no longer related to life. It's become the death industry - surviving on the blood of the poor for its existence. It survives on the sob stories of the poor. Their blood is the fertilizer that they must constantly give up so that the government can justify its need for the blood of the rich. What a horrible industry. Hideous to the hilt. I want to puke.
We are under a scourge. One that has been growing for a hundred years. It's the scourge of the little people - the people who hold individual human beings as small. The little people's biggest fear is that people can actually be great and large as a possibility that we can all aspire to. Rather than let man yearn and grow and fill these possibilities of his imagination and shape our government to allow this freedom (which is what it was designed to do), the little people strap down everything, regulate everything, tax everything, and in one way or another constrict everything and bend everything until is is some distorted, tortured, grotesque mis-shape of what it could be. This is the real pain of living in the United States right now.
When this passes, and only then, can we exhale.
And then...and then... we can inhale the sweet air of life once again.
Beep!
Both wrong Shirley! Both lead to the same consequences: No freedom and the theft of one man's life (I know it looks like a benefit at first) at the expense of another man's life - as public policy.
The Obama Administration immediately cast itself into a deeper HELL by falling all over itself to apologize for its quick judgment. Whoops! Another quick judgment! And just as bad!
Mr. Intelligence jumped from the racism of Sherrod to the thieving of Sherwood. So Robin Hood is the good?
Puh-leaze! If that's the case then it ought to be quite alright to relieve Obama of his millions. And Soros of his. And let me see how many there are that ought to cleanse their souls.
Not only is this pure hypocrisy as advocacy, it is simply wrong. To succeed, to excel, to achieve, and yes, to become wealthy is something that a person ought to want if he is actually seeking to better himself. Money is one measure. It's not the only one. Michael Jordan is an example of wealth - in basketball talent and works. Michelangelo is an example of wealth - in artistic talent and works. Others are example of wealth - in marketing talent and works, in entertainment talent and works, in manufacturing talent and works, etc.
No wealth, no future. So what Sherrod did by robbing the rich and giving to the poor was rob the poor man of his future. The underlying lesson was to be rich meant he would be robbed and probably no better off if he were to become rich. "Oh well, being rich was never my thing anyway."
None of this is America as conceived. None of it. It is as foreign to America as the Mandarin of China or Bantu of South Africa. Here, every man is protected in his life. He can work and earn property and live his life. It's his. He has a right to his life - ALL OF IT. Not a tiny piece of it. All of life and all that he sees is possible for life. This is America.
The thing that America used to do well but has literally been taxed out of doing is taking care of those that need a helping hand. Once the government started doing this, it has grown an industry of its own and it is no longer related to life. It's become the death industry - surviving on the blood of the poor for its existence. It survives on the sob stories of the poor. Their blood is the fertilizer that they must constantly give up so that the government can justify its need for the blood of the rich. What a horrible industry. Hideous to the hilt. I want to puke.
We are under a scourge. One that has been growing for a hundred years. It's the scourge of the little people - the people who hold individual human beings as small. The little people's biggest fear is that people can actually be great and large as a possibility that we can all aspire to. Rather than let man yearn and grow and fill these possibilities of his imagination and shape our government to allow this freedom (which is what it was designed to do), the little people strap down everything, regulate everything, tax everything, and in one way or another constrict everything and bend everything until is is some distorted, tortured, grotesque mis-shape of what it could be. This is the real pain of living in the United States right now.
When this passes, and only then, can we exhale.
And then...and then... we can inhale the sweet air of life once again.
Monday, July 12, 2010
What is Obama?
People are trying to categorize Obama. Is a socialist? Is he a fascist? Is he a statist?
The one thing everyone agrees with is that he is not a capitalist. He hates freedom and fights it at every turn. Not a day goes by when he doesn't infringe freedom in one way or another.
Socialism is a social system where the state owns all the property. To own property means to direct its use and disposal.
Capitalism is a social system where all the property is privately owned - which is to say that the means of production are owned by the individuals, not the state.
Fascism is a social system where the individuals possess the title, but the property's use and disposal is regulated and directed by the state. The net effect of fascism is that individuals possesses the liability for the property but not the benefits as those are directed/controlled by the state.
Statism is a social system where the state dominates life. It possesses all the liberties and the individual possesses none. Both socialism and fascism are statist systems. Capitalism is individualist, and not statist, since it is grounded in the individual and his rights.
Obama damns business, but he is completely in bed with business in that he's overtly made GM, Chrysler, the banks, and now the Medical system all parts of the government. They possess a form that looks like business, but they are actually government bureaucracies in another form. This makes Obama a fascist.
Fascism doesn't have to look like Hitler. Mussolini was a fascist. All progressives are fascists. They intend to create a so-called partnership of business and government. Since the government possesses the guns, it calls the shots and all the decisions of the business are based on politics, not supply and demand. The major failure of socialist and fascist systems is that they lose their bearings and become unable to direct the flow of goods for their best use. The politicians ultimately get so self-serving and paranoid that they direct everything for their use as they see it. The fact that they may couch those uses in terms that sound like they would benefit the country is for the purpose of selling it to the populace, not benefiting the country. This is being borne out in the Obama Administration and will get progressively worse as he carries it to new heights and as the fascism gets further entrenched.
Fascism sources corruption and so this administration is taking corruption to a new level. We need to purge ourselves of this scourge, and it is going to take some intense investigators and prosecutors to bring those who have corrupted our system to justice. Although corruption always exists in government as it does in other segments of society, to allow it to thrive as it is now thriving is to render this country to the status of a third-world country. A hallmark of the third-world is corruption with bribery as the means for getting anything done.
Capitalism is a self-cleansing system. The freer it is, the more this happens. A person has to stay straight in order to compete. This discourages all kinds of unproductive behaviors and encourages productive behaviors.
The one thing everyone agrees with is that he is not a capitalist. He hates freedom and fights it at every turn. Not a day goes by when he doesn't infringe freedom in one way or another.
Socialism is a social system where the state owns all the property. To own property means to direct its use and disposal.
Capitalism is a social system where all the property is privately owned - which is to say that the means of production are owned by the individuals, not the state.
Fascism is a social system where the individuals possess the title, but the property's use and disposal is regulated and directed by the state. The net effect of fascism is that individuals possesses the liability for the property but not the benefits as those are directed/controlled by the state.
Statism is a social system where the state dominates life. It possesses all the liberties and the individual possesses none. Both socialism and fascism are statist systems. Capitalism is individualist, and not statist, since it is grounded in the individual and his rights.
Obama damns business, but he is completely in bed with business in that he's overtly made GM, Chrysler, the banks, and now the Medical system all parts of the government. They possess a form that looks like business, but they are actually government bureaucracies in another form. This makes Obama a fascist.
Fascism doesn't have to look like Hitler. Mussolini was a fascist. All progressives are fascists. They intend to create a so-called partnership of business and government. Since the government possesses the guns, it calls the shots and all the decisions of the business are based on politics, not supply and demand. The major failure of socialist and fascist systems is that they lose their bearings and become unable to direct the flow of goods for their best use. The politicians ultimately get so self-serving and paranoid that they direct everything for their use as they see it. The fact that they may couch those uses in terms that sound like they would benefit the country is for the purpose of selling it to the populace, not benefiting the country. This is being borne out in the Obama Administration and will get progressively worse as he carries it to new heights and as the fascism gets further entrenched.
Fascism sources corruption and so this administration is taking corruption to a new level. We need to purge ourselves of this scourge, and it is going to take some intense investigators and prosecutors to bring those who have corrupted our system to justice. Although corruption always exists in government as it does in other segments of society, to allow it to thrive as it is now thriving is to render this country to the status of a third-world country. A hallmark of the third-world is corruption with bribery as the means for getting anything done.
Capitalism is a self-cleansing system. The freer it is, the more this happens. A person has to stay straight in order to compete. This discourages all kinds of unproductive behaviors and encourages productive behaviors.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
Our Incredibly Shrinking President
(Today I would like to register a rename for this article. It should read, "Our Incredibly Shrunken President." It's clear to me that Obama has never had a stature that he could shrink. He's been operating from the premises he's operating from now for a long, long time. He is stricken with the incredible facility to be Alinksy incarnate. I think he is a monster, my category for his character. 
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)
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Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Allowing Louisiana, to the tune of blocking efforts to save her shores and her industry and then suing Arizona when the Federal Government's role is to protect her borders, is beyond the pale. This man, to me, is on the order of all the heartless dictators the world has known and I don't see how he can do anything except get worse. His work to keep America in a perpetual Jerry Springer drama as a way of life has me write him off as a misguided, evil human being. It's definitely unfortunate for us that he has so much power to wield, and I hope we get him out of office before he develops paranoia to a degree whereby he feels justified to act even more irrationally. He's definitely animating the forces to vote him out of office. July 6, 2010)_______________________________________________________
Yesterday was a new low for President Obama. We are now witnessing the "chickens coming home to roost" on a host of his bad premises. This happened yesterday in his remarks about the oil spill.
First, and I think the most despicable, happened when he used his daughter to create an appeal to his listeners' emotions. He said his daughter said to him, "Plug the hole, daddy." That was theater, nothing more. However, it was revealing because he threw his daughter under the bus and ran over her privacy all in service of his "any means necessary" modus operandi premise. Because this statement came off as inauthentic, his use of his daughter opened her to public "use" in service of political points and who knows what else.
This morning on the Glenn Beck show, who, by the way, I'm liking more all the time (see next paragraph), he had a segment where his associate played the daughter, asking her "daddy, the President", all kinds of questions and offering her observations about the world. Obama opened his daughter to this. We can now look forward to a "do as I say, not as I do" upbraiding of Beck. I suppose this megalomaniac will attempt to ban free speech rather than apologize to his daughter and stop using her as pawn in his political power games.
Today I ran across this quote of Obama's about 9/11: "The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity." Yet, when it came to using his daughter as a pawn in his games, he forgot all of this and used her anyway. Obama is the disconnect that he names in his 9/11 remarks.
(About Beck: Beck is doing such investigative and historically integrative work. The last couple days he has been showing how the structure of the Progressive Administration of the "evil" (his description and one I agree with) Woodrow Wilson was picked up by FDR and now picked up by Obama, albeit using different particular forms for the same basic purposes in the latter two cases. Also, I give Beck a big medal of courage for the "teaching" he is doing. Really great. He's one of the amazing media people of our time. And my accolades are in spite of his ultimate grounding in God [faith] rather than in nature [facts] when he gets to the roots of his conceptual structure.)
The second thing O did was tell us his experience in his own bathroom, looking morning and night in the mirror at his constantly worried face. I was listening to his remarks for the facts I could learn about what is going on and what his plans are in relation to it. Instead I get this trip to his bathroom. (Faulty premise: The personal trumps our common values.)
Talk about whiplash. I wondered: "Where has this man's mind gone?" It is gone, I'm sure of that. He's not capable of knowing what is on purpose and what is not, and where his listeners are, and so he's now trying to enroll us that he, after all, is worrying about this problem. Sorry. Doesn't fly, Barack. We expect that. That would be normal and not mentionable.
(Makes you wonder if he had to say that. Is it because he isn't worrying about it? Or is he worrying that people who mean something to him are getting upset with him? Or maybe he really likes the oil spill and wants to use it to kill energy production in all traditional forms through taxation and regulation. I don't know, but his behavior raises such questions - especially when he is going off to Chicago over the weekend, playing golf, and generally living life as he always does - I'm sure justifying, all the while, that this current trouble requires getting away to clear his head. Actually I think he is doing that because he suffers from victim's disease - "I'm entitled." (Faulty premise: I'm somehow not constrained by the morality that mere mortals are constrained by.)
One thing I do know. THIS MAN IS NOT COUNT-ON-ABLE! He will never be there when the country needs him. Frankly, I think he's committing disloyalty to our country, our home, on a grand scale - treason - and he needs to be called to account as soon as possible.
The last thing he did was address people accusing him of not getting on the problem and causing a solution. He's been railing against BP and big oil, capitalist, and the all of it. So in his fear, he runs for the high ground only to see that it's not solid. (Faulty premise: Words is all that matter. Deeds and the meaning of words count for nothing.)
His answer is to declare that he and his Administration have been in charge of this matter from the first hours of its happening. So, if he's responsible, he owns it - all of it. So all the vituperation to BP and anyone trying to get the problem fixed is now useless by him when uttered in public. After all, it is only Barack being pissed at himself since he is the owner of it all. Woops!
Obama's mind is shot. There is no doubt about that. Our work is to maintain the grounding to be sure that we can see what is true and what is b--s---. True to a sociopath's nature, his job is to get us to think he is God and we don't know what we are talking about. Good luck. It's woolly out there.
A person, by the way, doesn't have to have a degree from Harvard or Columbia and in fact, one is likely better off if he doesn't have that. That's because these universities are notoriously intellectually corrupt, and in order to have power to produce results in the world depends on one's solidly grounded, conceptual structural. Then when some high blown guy comes along, one can hear where his assertions and underlying premises don't jive with the basics. Obama has no clue about this. Nada. He thinks we cling to our guns and our religion. Oh my.
Have a great Memorial Day weekend in this great country that still enjoys the bounty of the independent minds that have continued to create it.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
In Defiance of the Law of Cause and Effect
How many times have we heard this same refrain? Act against your nature, people! Our President pretends that somehow, when people have a purpose and build their life on it, they won't chose to act consistent with that purpose - that they can be seduced into changing their purpose - or more like this, "because of me, my charm and my idealism, you will want to change". It garners no credit for anyone to believe (and hope) for such a magical "transformation." It isn't generous. It isn't intelligent. It's stupid. Why? Because it defies a law of nature.
What law? The Law of Cause and Effect!
Listening to John Allison III of BB&T fame,(a recorded speech I possess) he said it this way. The Law of Cause and Effect: Everything in nature has a nature and it acts consistent with its nature. Tigers are tigers, stones are stones and people are people.
So what is the nature of a person? At root, a person is consistent with his purpose. One cannot operate for a minute without a purpose of some kind. An idea that comes into one's conscious mind is the event which unites spirit with body, mental with physical to cause a result of some kind.
Suppose a person laid in bed until he had some idea that he wanted to get up. He can say all kinds of things to himself - like, "I've got to get up because I've got to go to work. Yah, no one should have to work and because I have to, life is hell. I'm consigned to the burden and drudgery of life" - in other words, he may consider himself completely at the effect of, a victim of life. Of course there are zillions of positive reasons for getting up too.
No matter, what had to happen - regardless of the reason - was that an idea had to pop into the person's head and that became his purpose for the next few minutes or hours or longer. Whether he's willing to be responsible for that is another matter in this discussion. One simply could not operate without a purpose - at even the most rudimentary level above the automatic functions that the body provides so long as it lives.
But, creating a purpose for which one lives his life is more than a momentary undertaking. That goes far beyond waiting until one is struck by an idea or a feeling. It is something that one can create in the largest sense and generated from one's loves and one's ideals for an eminently fulfilling life. Or it is something one can create from the unquestioned beliefs he got from his childhood - but to the same scope. It can provide motive for a moment, a month or a lifetime.
A purpose sets the aspect of one's personal nature - his character. And this doesn't change in the broadest sense. It is possible to change it, but not without a lot of serious self-examination and work extending oneself into new, uncharted areas of his life.
When any leader has gotten to where he is, by virtue of his purpose and by enrolling, willingly or unwillingly, millions of followers, and further, when his purpose is rooted in the soil of centuries, that person is not going to change. To pretend otherwise and enroll the American people on that idea is immensely, horrendously disingenuous. (It could only be done with such people who defer to faith as a valid mental action, be it in a specifically religious form or in a modern mystical form. Anyone who lives in and is oriented to the real, everyday world and is working to manifest their larger and long-range purposes and have some capacity to integrate ideas and the events of life, simply would not buy this idea. One has to revert to the "magical thinking" of childhood [a stage in an individual's development] in order to consider this a real possibility.)
And yet, this is the foreign policy of this Administration that we are asked to swallow.
The cartoonists are reacting. (I got these from Sultan Knish's blog.)
What law? The Law of Cause and Effect!
Listening to John Allison III of BB&T fame,(a recorded speech I possess) he said it this way. The Law of Cause and Effect: Everything in nature has a nature and it acts consistent with its nature. Tigers are tigers, stones are stones and people are people.
So what is the nature of a person? At root, a person is consistent with his purpose. One cannot operate for a minute without a purpose of some kind. An idea that comes into one's conscious mind is the event which unites spirit with body, mental with physical to cause a result of some kind.
Suppose a person laid in bed until he had some idea that he wanted to get up. He can say all kinds of things to himself - like, "I've got to get up because I've got to go to work. Yah, no one should have to work and because I have to, life is hell. I'm consigned to the burden and drudgery of life" - in other words, he may consider himself completely at the effect of, a victim of life. Of course there are zillions of positive reasons for getting up too.
No matter, what had to happen - regardless of the reason - was that an idea had to pop into the person's head and that became his purpose for the next few minutes or hours or longer. Whether he's willing to be responsible for that is another matter in this discussion. One simply could not operate without a purpose - at even the most rudimentary level above the automatic functions that the body provides so long as it lives.
But, creating a purpose for which one lives his life is more than a momentary undertaking. That goes far beyond waiting until one is struck by an idea or a feeling. It is something that one can create in the largest sense and generated from one's loves and one's ideals for an eminently fulfilling life. Or it is something one can create from the unquestioned beliefs he got from his childhood - but to the same scope. It can provide motive for a moment, a month or a lifetime.
A purpose sets the aspect of one's personal nature - his character. And this doesn't change in the broadest sense. It is possible to change it, but not without a lot of serious self-examination and work extending oneself into new, uncharted areas of his life.
When any leader has gotten to where he is, by virtue of his purpose and by enrolling, willingly or unwillingly, millions of followers, and further, when his purpose is rooted in the soil of centuries, that person is not going to change. To pretend otherwise and enroll the American people on that idea is immensely, horrendously disingenuous. (It could only be done with such people who defer to faith as a valid mental action, be it in a specifically religious form or in a modern mystical form. Anyone who lives in and is oriented to the real, everyday world and is working to manifest their larger and long-range purposes and have some capacity to integrate ideas and the events of life, simply would not buy this idea. One has to revert to the "magical thinking" of childhood [a stage in an individual's development] in order to consider this a real possibility.)And yet, this is the foreign policy of this Administration that we are asked to swallow.
The cartoonists are reacting. (I got these from Sultan Knish's blog.)
Friday, May 14, 2010
Obama the Petulant
Later, at a Democratic fund-raising speech in Manhattan, Obama was blistering in his criticism of Republicans who are poised to pick up seats against Democratic majorities in November elections for the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.
Obama said Republicans have "done their best to gum up the works" and said they generated much of the country's fiscal deficit that they now complain about.
"Their basic attitude has been, if Democrats lose, we win. After they drove the car in the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. They can't drive. We don't want to have to go back in the ditch," he said.
It seems unbelievable that he would say something like this. This is a petulant 2 year old's behavior. He's not going to look good when it doesn't go his way and, guess what, it isn't his say as to who drives the car.
Obama lives in a victim's world where everything is personal and it is all about winning at all costs. When the Republicans go against him, it's personal - not that they don't agree with his ideas. Obama holds no principles - and by principles I mean holds a valid view of reality, a valid view of how the world works. He is truly a postmodern president and he thinks that what he says IS reality. Then he gets angry when people don't buy it. He thinks it is his fault that he has not said it enough times or that he hasn't said it in the right way to be clear enough. He cannot tap into people's listening. He doesn't get that concept. Instead, he shows everyone the fallacy of postmodern philosophy and his presidency will be the end of that philosophy as an influence.
Further, his presidency will end the Democratic Party as we know it. An entire generation of Democrats will be thrown under the bus as the rank and file search for a new formulation of what a Democrat is. His presidency will be very hard on the Ivy League schools who willingly turn out graduates like Obama, graduates schooled in arcane philosophy and moral theory cut off from the nature of people and how they operate. And if Obama is any indication, the graduates are without a capacity to produce results that make a real and positive difference. They apparently are so inflated with their elite status that they are unable to hear people and their concerns.
Obama's presidency may make it hard for other blacks to get heard until they prove themselves in some way. Affirmative Action will have lost any luster it once had because Obama holding the highest office in the land has ended the matter of Affirmative Action's value. Blacks will have to measure up because there is going to be a new assertion of wanting results, not easing of one's conscious or some other beside-the-point purpose. (The collapse of the global warming cause is also part of this.) I think the media are going to take a big hit out of this presidency because they have been exposed as giving us little protection against this catastrophic leadership. They have also been caught up in postmodern madness.
Finally and most important, the government itself is going to take a huge hit. This could be anywhere from the people elected to the structure of the bureaucracy and its functions. It wouldn't surprise me to see pressure to reduce government salaries back to below private pay. There are going to be many changes. And many have been due to happen. The Obama presidency is the catalyst.
Obama said Republicans have "done their best to gum up the works" and said they generated much of the country's fiscal deficit that they now complain about.
"Their basic attitude has been, if Democrats lose, we win. After they drove the car in the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No. They can't drive. We don't want to have to go back in the ditch," he said.
It seems unbelievable that he would say something like this. This is a petulant 2 year old's behavior. He's not going to look good when it doesn't go his way and, guess what, it isn't his say as to who drives the car.
Obama lives in a victim's world where everything is personal and it is all about winning at all costs. When the Republicans go against him, it's personal - not that they don't agree with his ideas. Obama holds no principles - and by principles I mean holds a valid view of reality, a valid view of how the world works. He is truly a postmodern president and he thinks that what he says IS reality. Then he gets angry when people don't buy it. He thinks it is his fault that he has not said it enough times or that he hasn't said it in the right way to be clear enough. He cannot tap into people's listening. He doesn't get that concept. Instead, he shows everyone the fallacy of postmodern philosophy and his presidency will be the end of that philosophy as an influence.
Further, his presidency will end the Democratic Party as we know it. An entire generation of Democrats will be thrown under the bus as the rank and file search for a new formulation of what a Democrat is. His presidency will be very hard on the Ivy League schools who willingly turn out graduates like Obama, graduates schooled in arcane philosophy and moral theory cut off from the nature of people and how they operate. And if Obama is any indication, the graduates are without a capacity to produce results that make a real and positive difference. They apparently are so inflated with their elite status that they are unable to hear people and their concerns.
Obama's presidency may make it hard for other blacks to get heard until they prove themselves in some way. Affirmative Action will have lost any luster it once had because Obama holding the highest office in the land has ended the matter of Affirmative Action's value. Blacks will have to measure up because there is going to be a new assertion of wanting results, not easing of one's conscious or some other beside-the-point purpose. (The collapse of the global warming cause is also part of this.) I think the media are going to take a big hit out of this presidency because they have been exposed as giving us little protection against this catastrophic leadership. They have also been caught up in postmodern madness.
Finally and most important, the government itself is going to take a huge hit. This could be anywhere from the people elected to the structure of the bureaucracy and its functions. It wouldn't surprise me to see pressure to reduce government salaries back to below private pay. There are going to be many changes. And many have been due to happen. The Obama presidency is the catalyst.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Crony Capitalism - The Mainstay of Our Fascist State
As Obama gobbles up entire sectors of business for his socialist/European-style state - which, incidentally, is getting a new hearing with Greece's collapse - he's engaging in crony capitalism full blast. The ordinary man will soon not have a chance, as it will be political pull at every level of society that will determine one's fate. Government meddling in the economy through regulation and controls/ownership of all and myriad kinds is THE PRESCRIPTION for a failed state as the state gets focused on the wrong kinds of activities. People have not seen it yet, but all of the European countries are failed states judged by the standard of the job that a state ought to do and is not doing. America was the first state put on a rational foundation such that it was possible for it to succeed. One thing wrong with it from a powerluster's point of view: There is no avenue via which to loot the citizenry.
At this point in America's history, it is a failure. Whether there is enough power left in the structure of the Constitution for us (the people) to assert ourselves to get back on the right track hangs in the balance.
At this point in America's history, it is a failure. Whether there is enough power left in the structure of the Constitution for us (the people) to assert ourselves to get back on the right track hangs in the balance.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
The War on Freedom
Freedom is fundamental to every relationship. We have to be able to be ourselves as our nature as a human has us be in any relationship in order to survive. This is true on the interpersonal level and to a more removed degree in the political, the societal world. One cannot thrive except in a climate of freedom. This has been borne out by the extreme statist and totalitarian societies and by the organizations whose beliefs stifle people such that it brings many problems upon the individuals who belong to them. It's bad enough to manage one's own freedom let alone have unagreed to (and sometimes erroneously agreed to) constraints imposed from without.
At this point in history, freedom is under direct attack and so it behooves us to understand as much as we can about what is going on. Daniel Greenfield penned this on his blog today.
The War on Freedom
Posted: 03 May 2010 07:27 PM PDT
How do you take away the freedom of a free people without putting tanks on every street? You do it by transforming their culture. By turning the very idea of freedom into something ugly and shameful. A foul thing to be associated with extremists and other bad folk that good citizens are advised to avoid. The goal being to convince the people that their freedom is a thing they should be happy to give up, rather than having to forcibly take it away from them.
And so the political War on Freedom begins by rebranding freedom itself as selfish. In this new narrative freedom is a lie because there is no such thing as freedom in America. The very idea of freedom is an arrogant and privileged entitlement held by "rich white males" and used to oppress "people of color" and all the other officially designated minorities by the Commissars of Political Correctness. In place of the old fashioned idea of freedom, we have the far more "equitable" system of social justice with its myriad of organizations and departments all created to ensure that everyone does what they're supposed to, thinks what they're supposed to and has as many rights as they're supposed to.
As Orwell's 1984 accurately predicted, in Newspeak, Freedom becomes Slavery, and Slavery becomes Freedom.
As the new liberal narrative would have it, the only people who want the freedom to keep what they earn, write what they think, choose their own health care, elect their own leaders, read what they like and live lives apart from the great machinery of the state-- are the White Male Oppressors, (who are simultaneously ignorant clinging to their religion and their guns and yet at the same time are part of a privileged elite). Freedom is clearly a bad thing then. It's a symptom of selfishness. And selfish people are the oppressors, The greedy ones who don't want a welfare state, illegal aliens, impossibly priced products, inaccessible lifesaving medical procedures, recycling bins in every room of the house and all the other wonderful benefits of Socialism.
People who want to be free are no longer Americans. Certainly not Constitutionalists. Instead paradoxically they're the new parasites, the people who refuse to be cogs in the great machine of socialism. The selfish Kulaks who hoard their wheat. The businessmen who make too much money. The hardworking housewife who won't pay double for a "Green" labeled product. These are the worms in the apple of the socialist state. The people who refuse to contribute to what the government and the alliance of unions, left wing front groups and media pundits labels as the Public Good.
The USSR began by portraying independent small farmers as greedy monsters who were responsible for the people starving, because they refused to give up their land and join collective farms. Collective farms whose workers had nothing, could not even travel without a permit and had to steal the food they grew in order to survive. And so war was declared on the independent farmer. Millions were shot, deported or imprisoned in labor camps. However by eliminating the independent farmer, the Communists also eliminated Russian agriculture. The collective farms were an abysmal failure. Within a generation, Russia was stuck importing wheat from the independent farmers of its worst enemy, the United States of America.
By declaring war on American small business, liberals are about to repeat the Soviet experiment in the United States. The decline of the US economy is closely tied to the war on small business. To the replacement of the businessman with the speculator, the inflation of the dollar, the destruction of the manufacturing sector and the transformation of the US into a service and sales economy, not that fundamentally different from the rest of the Third World.
But the left's war on the small businessman is about more than just seizing wealth in order to finance their own operations. That of course is a large part of it. The left has always believed that it must live off the land. And from the French Revolution to their modern day grandchildren, the Communists and Nazis, they have always know that wealth distribution is needed to be able to live off the land. But what they never understood is that their idea of government as a robber baron practices a multi-generational form of economic destruction that there is no full recovery from. It is possible to replace lost gold and silver. But replacing an economic niche when you have wiped out the people who used to fill it, and culturally blotted it out, can be next to impossible.
Yet that is exactly what the left wants to accomplish. Its goal has always been the destruction of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the people who are living proof that hard work and economic aspiration leads to social mobility and political freedoms. These the left considers banal, selfish and rotten. Their existence a subversion of the left's own revolutionary ideology. Because they have achieved freedom through work, rather than ideology. Because they believe that those who work should be the masters of government, rather than properly qualified university graduates who have spent five years penning screeds about the unfairness of having to work for a living. And so like the Kulaks, they must go.
The destruction of the economy is not part of the collateral damage from liberalism's uncontrollable spending or nanny stateism. It is the whole point.
The Founding Fathers understood that economic freedom was also political freedom. That is why the Boston Tea Party played such a key role in the race toward political independence and self-government. Liberal revisionist historians typically deride the American Revolution as a Middle Class revolution. Which of course was exactly the point. Distance and opportunity had made political aspirations possible in America. But economic opportunity had made them meaningful. Thus the difference between the revolt in Haiti and the one in the 13 colonies. Much as Israel's independence differed from the independence gained by so many other former British colonies in that part of the world.
One cannot have political independence without economic independence on the national level and on the individual level. Where economic independence is compromised, political independence soon follows. And the decline of individual liberties in America can be directly traced to its split between socialism and corporatism, two seeming opposites drawn together by inertia to form one great economic black hole. A situation that the last few years of bailouts and toobigtofails, useless regulatory bodies and political power grabs should have amply demonstrated for anyone.
The War on Freedom therefore is geared toward portraying freedom as selfish and greedy. As a dangerous anachronism out of place in the modern day socialist country. There is no such thing as freedom, they will say. Only privilege. The idea that you could believe what you wished, say what you wished, elect your own leaders and make your own economic decisions, was all part of the arrogance of the entitled. But now there will be people who will distribute that privilege equally to all, within the parameters of the public good. The public good in their eyes being indivisible from their own good, and that of the system of redistribution that they oversee. And that is how tyranny begins, and freedom dies.
Freedom, real freedom, isn't perfect. It is the freedom to make one's own mistakes, rather than having the state make everyone's mistakes for them. At the same time. Freedom is not a selfish thing that obstructs the public good, it is the public good. Because the public good is best served by individual freedom, not by a collective yoked together in the same of an impossible ideal. The tyranny of the collective has never created its heaven on earth, but it has instead produced no shortage of hells. It is left to the individual to pursue his happiness, and in the process helps others find theirs. The collective has never changed the world for the better. Only individuals have.
Liberalism insists that freedom is a shameful thing. A rebellion against their idea of the public good. Their War on Freedom is in truth a war on the individual. And it is one that we must win, if freedom is to prevail.
At this point in history, freedom is under direct attack and so it behooves us to understand as much as we can about what is going on. Daniel Greenfield penned this on his blog today.
The War on Freedom
Posted: 03 May 2010 07:27 PM PDT
How do you take away the freedom of a free people without putting tanks on every street? You do it by transforming their culture. By turning the very idea of freedom into something ugly and shameful. A foul thing to be associated with extremists and other bad folk that good citizens are advised to avoid. The goal being to convince the people that their freedom is a thing they should be happy to give up, rather than having to forcibly take it away from them.
And so the political War on Freedom begins by rebranding freedom itself as selfish. In this new narrative freedom is a lie because there is no such thing as freedom in America. The very idea of freedom is an arrogant and privileged entitlement held by "rich white males" and used to oppress "people of color" and all the other officially designated minorities by the Commissars of Political Correctness. In place of the old fashioned idea of freedom, we have the far more "equitable" system of social justice with its myriad of organizations and departments all created to ensure that everyone does what they're supposed to, thinks what they're supposed to and has as many rights as they're supposed to.
As Orwell's 1984 accurately predicted, in Newspeak, Freedom becomes Slavery, and Slavery becomes Freedom.
As the new liberal narrative would have it, the only people who want the freedom to keep what they earn, write what they think, choose their own health care, elect their own leaders, read what they like and live lives apart from the great machinery of the state-- are the White Male Oppressors, (who are simultaneously ignorant clinging to their religion and their guns and yet at the same time are part of a privileged elite). Freedom is clearly a bad thing then. It's a symptom of selfishness. And selfish people are the oppressors, The greedy ones who don't want a welfare state, illegal aliens, impossibly priced products, inaccessible lifesaving medical procedures, recycling bins in every room of the house and all the other wonderful benefits of Socialism.
People who want to be free are no longer Americans. Certainly not Constitutionalists. Instead paradoxically they're the new parasites, the people who refuse to be cogs in the great machine of socialism. The selfish Kulaks who hoard their wheat. The businessmen who make too much money. The hardworking housewife who won't pay double for a "Green" labeled product. These are the worms in the apple of the socialist state. The people who refuse to contribute to what the government and the alliance of unions, left wing front groups and media pundits labels as the Public Good.
The USSR began by portraying independent small farmers as greedy monsters who were responsible for the people starving, because they refused to give up their land and join collective farms. Collective farms whose workers had nothing, could not even travel without a permit and had to steal the food they grew in order to survive. And so war was declared on the independent farmer. Millions were shot, deported or imprisoned in labor camps. However by eliminating the independent farmer, the Communists also eliminated Russian agriculture. The collective farms were an abysmal failure. Within a generation, Russia was stuck importing wheat from the independent farmers of its worst enemy, the United States of America.
By declaring war on American small business, liberals are about to repeat the Soviet experiment in the United States. The decline of the US economy is closely tied to the war on small business. To the replacement of the businessman with the speculator, the inflation of the dollar, the destruction of the manufacturing sector and the transformation of the US into a service and sales economy, not that fundamentally different from the rest of the Third World.
But the left's war on the small businessman is about more than just seizing wealth in order to finance their own operations. That of course is a large part of it. The left has always believed that it must live off the land. And from the French Revolution to their modern day grandchildren, the Communists and Nazis, they have always know that wealth distribution is needed to be able to live off the land. But what they never understood is that their idea of government as a robber baron practices a multi-generational form of economic destruction that there is no full recovery from. It is possible to replace lost gold and silver. But replacing an economic niche when you have wiped out the people who used to fill it, and culturally blotted it out, can be next to impossible.
Yet that is exactly what the left wants to accomplish. Its goal has always been the destruction of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the people who are living proof that hard work and economic aspiration leads to social mobility and political freedoms. These the left considers banal, selfish and rotten. Their existence a subversion of the left's own revolutionary ideology. Because they have achieved freedom through work, rather than ideology. Because they believe that those who work should be the masters of government, rather than properly qualified university graduates who have spent five years penning screeds about the unfairness of having to work for a living. And so like the Kulaks, they must go.
The destruction of the economy is not part of the collateral damage from liberalism's uncontrollable spending or nanny stateism. It is the whole point.
The Founding Fathers understood that economic freedom was also political freedom. That is why the Boston Tea Party played such a key role in the race toward political independence and self-government. Liberal revisionist historians typically deride the American Revolution as a Middle Class revolution. Which of course was exactly the point. Distance and opportunity had made political aspirations possible in America. But economic opportunity had made them meaningful. Thus the difference between the revolt in Haiti and the one in the 13 colonies. Much as Israel's independence differed from the independence gained by so many other former British colonies in that part of the world.
One cannot have political independence without economic independence on the national level and on the individual level. Where economic independence is compromised, political independence soon follows. And the decline of individual liberties in America can be directly traced to its split between socialism and corporatism, two seeming opposites drawn together by inertia to form one great economic black hole. A situation that the last few years of bailouts and toobigtofails, useless regulatory bodies and political power grabs should have amply demonstrated for anyone.
The War on Freedom therefore is geared toward portraying freedom as selfish and greedy. As a dangerous anachronism out of place in the modern day socialist country. There is no such thing as freedom, they will say. Only privilege. The idea that you could believe what you wished, say what you wished, elect your own leaders and make your own economic decisions, was all part of the arrogance of the entitled. But now there will be people who will distribute that privilege equally to all, within the parameters of the public good. The public good in their eyes being indivisible from their own good, and that of the system of redistribution that they oversee. And that is how tyranny begins, and freedom dies.Freedom, real freedom, isn't perfect. It is the freedom to make one's own mistakes, rather than having the state make everyone's mistakes for them. At the same time. Freedom is not a selfish thing that obstructs the public good, it is the public good. Because the public good is best served by individual freedom, not by a collective yoked together in the same of an impossible ideal. The tyranny of the collective has never created its heaven on earth, but it has instead produced no shortage of hells. It is left to the individual to pursue his happiness, and in the process helps others find theirs. The collective has never changed the world for the better. Only individuals have.
Liberalism insists that freedom is a shameful thing. A rebellion against their idea of the public good. Their War on Freedom is in truth a war on the individual. And it is one that we must win, if freedom is to prevail.
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