Sunday, July 27, 2008
Vitus
Vitus, a Swiss movie, hit the big screen in 2007. It won a Swiss film award that year.
I'd never heard of it. One website said upon release, its box office was $28,092; another said its US box office was $186,492.
It is about an intelligent child prodigy, Vitus, who is controlled when she realizes she has a real wunderkind on her hands. Her control goes too far and he decides he wants to be an ordinary kid. He uses his intelligence "being ordinary" to find his way to autonomy.
Spiritually, this is one of the best movies, among a very, very few, I have ever seen.
It is a heart warmer, but it goes far beyond that. A heart warmer may produce warm fuzzy feelings, but it doesn't produce the feeling of sheer joy and vitality that we all seek although we may have given up on it. A worked-for achievement does that. My spirit soared seeing this movie. In fact, I thought I would burst. My soul heard the music of its possibility. My mind was spinning.
Vitus is the healthy ego. He may go through rough times, but his spirit and intelligence is unable to bend to the dictates of society around him.
In Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, she describes this feeling. "She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself, they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive. It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be. It was the song of an immense deliverance."
Yes, deliverance. I got it.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Wall Street Got Drunk?
The hell they did. Bush's statement is absurd, not from the standpoint that Wall Street didn't run with the openings they saw because of Washington's regulation, but because he places the cause as Wall Street.
A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.
Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.
The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.
The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.
The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.
All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.
The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.
A legitimate authentic businessman doesn't get "drunk" about these matters and he does not allow himself to be thrown off track by eating the manna dropped from Washington.
Suppose I have decided to be a bank. I offer safe-keeping for people's money. In an unregulated market, the value I'm offering is safety and liquidity. People want to know that their money is secure from theft and they want to know that they can go get it when they need it.
The issue of lending money becomes a potential threat to those values unless I know what I am doing. Loans of all kinds have to be set up first with the depositors such that they are compensated for the risks they incur with their deposits that can be used for making loans. I, the banker in this case, have to know how much reserve I must have to protect the basic values I offer lest people come to the bank and find that they cannot get their money. If that happens, I'm bankrupt and my business is over.
The government has told the banks that they can lend more than they otherwise would and they have told them to loan to risky would-be borrowers. The government, they said, will ultimately back their depositors via the FDIC and other institutions. They have refocussed the concerns of the bank by removing the urgent reality of their accountability to their customers. The government will cover it.
The fact that the government isn't a bank dealing with people nor an insurance company who sets up reserves for the risks it takes is another story. The government is FORCE and has to take everything out of the hide of the population. It does it by taxation or inflation, i.e., the printing press.
All of the shenanigans of the banks and mortgage companies in the current fiasco result from the government's removing the principles of sound banking from the concern of the banks and mortgage companies. Hence a bubble which, when the piper plays his tune better known as when profligate ways hit the wall of reality, has to burst. Bush's fingerpointing is ludicrous and ignorant of what is going on. He should know better. Until we make sure the government stops inserting their FORCE via regulations into the situation this will not change.
The moral of this story? Force obviates the seeking of authentic values and the responsiblity for achieving those values.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Unfree Market has Failed
With the economy slowing and the home mortgage industry reeling from the stupidity of government fostered regulations and money which obviated the need for sound financial judgment, we hear frantic cries, "Save us! Save us!!" directed to the government. If a person is trying to drown you, what good is it to scream for him to save you? Alas, this is the widespread response.
I read an argument last night the point of which was that gas prices are rising not because of rising demand but inflation. I hear scant mention of inflation as the cause and none of those come from Washington. We know when other currencies are rising relative to the dollar our currency is worth less. The dollar has been the currency of choice around the world for years and now people don't want it.
Government control of the money supply is certain, albeit sometimes slow, death and the expanding (once in a while it deflates) money bubble is where we have been perched for about a hundred years. Obviously money is something whose reputation has to be earned, as we are now seeing. It is done by the judicious maintenance of value, a quality that the US Government cancelled via the legal tender laws. See below: Money by Consent Not Force posted June 20.
The government is a political institution, not a business that must maintain its value to the world in order to exist. The governement deals with everything by the use of force, not value, and once it steps beyond the protection of individual rights, that force becomes an enemy of its people.
Every major industry is now regulated to the point that people cannot make rational decisions. Time is spent doing what we can get permission to do rather than what is creative, intelligent and prudent. The human mind is the source of values, production, wealth and happiness. The government, on the other hand, acting beyond its proper purpose, cancels the human mind except as a slave to its needs and whims.
Bribes to the legislators and regulators are commonplace because no other way to get their blessing to be their slave is possible. If you don't know how you are paying them bribes, think about it a minute. You buy a license to drive your car. You buy a license to open a business. You pay them fees and taxes to have a phone. The list is endless and would not be if these goods and services were the products of businesses creating appealing values and we were free. Now isn't this a mess? Nevertheless, it's true.
Government to Blame for Housing and Financial Crisis
by Yaron Brook (7/22/08)
Irvine, CA--In “The Government Did It,” an opinion piece published last Friday on Forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that our government’s massive control over the housing and financial markets has led to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.
“The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Dr. Brook pointed out, “should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.”
Citing the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, Dr. Brook argued that “our government contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually,” Brook concluded, “the bubble burst.”
“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘steering.’ What we need to do,” said Brook, “is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”
Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
I read an argument last night the point of which was that gas prices are rising not because of rising demand but inflation. I hear scant mention of inflation as the cause and none of those come from Washington. We know when other currencies are rising relative to the dollar our currency is worth less. The dollar has been the currency of choice around the world for years and now people don't want it.
Government control of the money supply is certain, albeit sometimes slow, death and the expanding (once in a while it deflates) money bubble is where we have been perched for about a hundred years. Obviously money is something whose reputation has to be earned, as we are now seeing. It is done by the judicious maintenance of value, a quality that the US Government cancelled via the legal tender laws. See below: Money by Consent Not Force posted June 20.
The government is a political institution, not a business that must maintain its value to the world in order to exist. The governement deals with everything by the use of force, not value, and once it steps beyond the protection of individual rights, that force becomes an enemy of its people.
Every major industry is now regulated to the point that people cannot make rational decisions. Time is spent doing what we can get permission to do rather than what is creative, intelligent and prudent. The human mind is the source of values, production, wealth and happiness. The government, on the other hand, acting beyond its proper purpose, cancels the human mind except as a slave to its needs and whims.
Bribes to the legislators and regulators are commonplace because no other way to get their blessing to be their slave is possible. If you don't know how you are paying them bribes, think about it a minute. You buy a license to drive your car. You buy a license to open a business. You pay them fees and taxes to have a phone. The list is endless and would not be if these goods and services were the products of businesses creating appealing values and we were free. Now isn't this a mess? Nevertheless, it's true.
Government to Blame for Housing and Financial Crisis
by Yaron Brook (7/22/08)
Irvine, CA--In “The Government Did It,” an opinion piece published last Friday on Forbes.com, Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, argued that our government’s massive control over the housing and financial markets has led to many of the problems being blamed on the free market today.
“The financial peril of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” Dr. Brook pointed out, “should help expose the lie that today’s financial problems are the result of an insufficiently regulated market.”
Citing the government’s hand in the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve Board’s inflationary policy of keeping interest rates artificially low, the irrational lending standards forced on lenders by the federal Community Reinvestment Act, and the quasi-official policy of bailing out large financial institutions deemed too big to fail, Dr. Brook argued that “our government contributed to creating a situation in which millions of people were buying homes they could not afford, in which the participants experienced the illusion of prosperity, in which billions upon billions of dollars were going into bad investments. Eventually,” Brook concluded, “the bubble burst.”
“We do not need more regulation or economic ‘steering.’ What we need to do,” said Brook, “is remove the government’s power to coerce, bribe, reward and bail out irrational decisions. The unfree market has failed. It’s time for a truly free market.”
Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute.
Copyright © 2008 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Is This Coronation by Global Triangulation?
Suppose you have a close relationship with a friend/spouse. Your friend/spouse does something you don't like and instead of going to them with your complaint/concern, you go to another friend and talk about them. This person agrees with your side of the story which eases your angst. You don't really resolve your difference with your friend/spouse and you don't repair your relationship.
The situation smoulders; your relationship deteriorates. You wonder why you can no longer get it up. Your interest wains; an emotional estrangement ensues. A worse case is if you used what the second friend said as backing for your position in a talk with your friend/spouse. Needless to say, your friend/spouse will get angry, feel outnumbered and violated because you blabbed about them outside the relationship. This is the phenomenon of triangulation, the use of an uninvolved outside person/group to gain power in a situation.
There are other aspects to this like asking a question of the third person that you know they will answer in a certain way and then use that differently back home in a different context.
Obama is now in the Mideast, soon to go to Europe. Already Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, ran a controversial article stating that Maliki, PM of Iraq, agrees with Obama's 16 month plan. "When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded, as written in the article, 'as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.' He then continued: 'US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.'"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566841,00.html
(I'm hearing now that Maliki said he was misinterpreted by Der Spiegel. This may or may not be true since the Muslim countries are known for their opaque manipulations. I'm left wondering.)
Is Obama going to Europe to get backing from a "friend" to finesse McCain? Cannot he now say (or better yet let us see for ourselves), "It's what Maliki as spokesman for the Iraqi people want so my timetable is right and your hedging on a withdrawal date regardless of your reasons is wrong?"
McCain's position as I understand it is that we have had tremendous success in Iraq. We don't want to mess it up by being hasty and opening up the situation to a reversal when it is in its closing phase. If the situation were to deteriorate we may have to go back for a third war in Iraq, the very thing that most people complained about how Bush I handled the situation.
Obama, after visiting Iraq and Jordan (he's already been to Afghanistan) heads to Europe for some "rock star" performances. 300 of the press are following his every move, beaming images and stories back to the US. Is he using this means rather than debate and dialogue with McCain and the American people to secure his coronation? I think he intends so.
Power and adulation is Obama's primary motive. Positive results in the districts he has representated are "shrimpy" at best and non-existent or negative in at least two important cases.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-YoB5mnZs regarding his association with Rezko who is now in jail in housing and http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/06/19/that-%e2%80%9cguy-who-lives-in-my-neighborhood%e2%80%9d-behind-the-ayers-obama-relationship/ regarding his education project.
I do not favor public housing under any circumstances as the free market is moral and it is practically superior for providing housing at all income levels. Also the same freedom provides responsible charity. The above links demonstrate the results for projects Obama put himself on the hook for. These projects are the result of an immoral ethic that pervades our society and which allows Obama to be irresponsible regarding his results. He says "I didn't know."
Further, political triangulation is a tactic from the class warfare playbook - pit one class against another, one ethnic group against another, ultimately one person against another in an ongoing group-based battle. Alinsky, his primary class warfare political tactic mentor, screams the only issue to be power, power, power, Everything I see in Obama is a match for these tactics. His campaign is certainly not about the issues. He says anything, contradicts what he's previously said or walks an oratorial tightrope in the hope to feed cake to all sides. As for me, my head is spinning; I have a headache; I don a neck brace before I watch TV (not really). The fascination with his eloquent preacherly orations have soured to grandiloquent bullshit. I don't believe any of it except that he loves adulation too much.
Just as the person in the opening scenario won't do the heavy lifting and endure the discomfort of rationally dealing with the real issues for whatever reason and opts for petty blow-offs, Obama continues to play the "I'm a star" game where "out-starring" his opponent is his answer. I find it deeply disrespectful to human being and anyone who actually cares and is interested in the workability of his ideas.
McCain is looking like a loyal friend/spouse while Obama galavants around the neighborhood looking for people who tell him he's cool.
The situation smoulders; your relationship deteriorates. You wonder why you can no longer get it up. Your interest wains; an emotional estrangement ensues. A worse case is if you used what the second friend said as backing for your position in a talk with your friend/spouse. Needless to say, your friend/spouse will get angry, feel outnumbered and violated because you blabbed about them outside the relationship. This is the phenomenon of triangulation, the use of an uninvolved outside person/group to gain power in a situation.
There are other aspects to this like asking a question of the third person that you know they will answer in a certain way and then use that differently back home in a different context.
Obama is now in the Mideast, soon to go to Europe. Already Der Spiegel, a German news magazine, ran a controversial article stating that Maliki, PM of Iraq, agrees with Obama's 16 month plan. "When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded, as written in the article, 'as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.' He then continued: 'US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.'"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,566841,00.html
(I'm hearing now that Maliki said he was misinterpreted by Der Spiegel. This may or may not be true since the Muslim countries are known for their opaque manipulations. I'm left wondering.)
Is Obama going to Europe to get backing from a "friend" to finesse McCain? Cannot he now say (or better yet let us see for ourselves), "It's what Maliki as spokesman for the Iraqi people want so my timetable is right and your hedging on a withdrawal date regardless of your reasons is wrong?"
McCain's position as I understand it is that we have had tremendous success in Iraq. We don't want to mess it up by being hasty and opening up the situation to a reversal when it is in its closing phase. If the situation were to deteriorate we may have to go back for a third war in Iraq, the very thing that most people complained about how Bush I handled the situation.
Obama, after visiting Iraq and Jordan (he's already been to Afghanistan) heads to Europe for some "rock star" performances. 300 of the press are following his every move, beaming images and stories back to the US. Is he using this means rather than debate and dialogue with McCain and the American people to secure his coronation? I think he intends so.
Power and adulation is Obama's primary motive. Positive results in the districts he has representated are "shrimpy" at best and non-existent or negative in at least two important cases.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/27/grim_proving_ground_for_obamas_housing_policy/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hP-YoB5mnZs regarding his association with Rezko who is now in jail in housing and http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/06/19/that-%e2%80%9cguy-who-lives-in-my-neighborhood%e2%80%9d-behind-the-ayers-obama-relationship/ regarding his education project.
I do not favor public housing under any circumstances as the free market is moral and it is practically superior for providing housing at all income levels. Also the same freedom provides responsible charity. The above links demonstrate the results for projects Obama put himself on the hook for. These projects are the result of an immoral ethic that pervades our society and which allows Obama to be irresponsible regarding his results. He says "I didn't know."
Further, political triangulation is a tactic from the class warfare playbook - pit one class against another, one ethnic group against another, ultimately one person against another in an ongoing group-based battle. Alinsky, his primary class warfare political tactic mentor, screams the only issue to be power, power, power, Everything I see in Obama is a match for these tactics. His campaign is certainly not about the issues. He says anything, contradicts what he's previously said or walks an oratorial tightrope in the hope to feed cake to all sides. As for me, my head is spinning; I have a headache; I don a neck brace before I watch TV (not really). The fascination with his eloquent preacherly orations have soured to grandiloquent bullshit. I don't believe any of it except that he loves adulation too much.
Just as the person in the opening scenario won't do the heavy lifting and endure the discomfort of rationally dealing with the real issues for whatever reason and opts for petty blow-offs, Obama continues to play the "I'm a star" game where "out-starring" his opponent is his answer. I find it deeply disrespectful to human being and anyone who actually cares and is interested in the workability of his ideas.
McCain is looking like a loyal friend/spouse while Obama galavants around the neighborhood looking for people who tell him he's cool.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Piercing the Pretense
When I saw this on The Drudge Report, I roared with delight. Finally someone had the guts to pierce the front and the stultifying PC that we know as Obama. Obama may get elected, but how can I take him seriously intellectually? I don't believe a thing he says.Obama has so many untouchable subjects around him that whenever anyone points out obvious gaffes, inconsistencies, embarrassing blanks of knowledge, and the obvious tiptoe on his tightrope, he rebuts with why their remarks are inappropriate. He's "unable to understand why they would say that", "why they shouldn't have said that" and so "offended-waiting-to-happen" that he's painful to watch. Of course the cover above was "tasteless and offensive." (In this age of Ugly and Envy, since when has taste and inoffensiveness been a standard for much of anything?) He blows off serious discussion of issues. If you criticize him, you are wrong and very bad. Working around him must be "oh so much fun."
The New Yorker did him a favor.
I wish the article inside would have opened up this whole area for him and for us. Instead it worked real hard to make him an ordinary politician doing his thing. This he is not.
Obama is dangerous. Not in the sense of the cartoon, per se. He trafficks in class warfare. He uses any underclass as justification for all action. He is a political wonk whose main occupation is knowing the intricasies of how to gain power - and now ultimate power.
Whatever ideas he may use as justification in various settings, Obama is not a serious student of politics in any philosophical sense. If he were he would know better than to advocate these failed ideas. He exploits people to pit one segment of society against another. He loves grievances rather than ideals as his fulcrum. He spends other people's money to produce no change. Does this stop him? Not even a bump on the road.
In every satire is a grain of truth.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
America's Special Grace
I read this this evening in the TIA Daily published by Robert Tracinski. http://www.intellectualactivist.com/
After listening to so much bad news and bad politics, this was a pleasure that had to be shared. It captures the essence of America's greatness although it attributes it to theist reasons rather than the Enlightenment one of the freedom of the individual mind - that solitary organ where thought, discovery and resulting knowledge that improves mankind's lot occurs. SCB
"America's Special Grace," "Spengler," Asia Times, July 8
Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America's influence in the world. America's enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies. America's influence in the world leapt as result of her victory in three world wars, including the fall of communism in 1989. Arguably, America is ascending even faster today, despite the reverses in its economic position and the strains on its military resources….
If America has been given a special grace, it is because its founders as well as every generation of its people have taken as the basis of America's legitimacy the Judeo-Christian belief that God loves every individual, and most of all the humblest. Rights under law, from the American vantage point, are sacred, not utilitarian, convenient or consensual….
It is an irony that globalization itself has provided the means to a handful of endangered ethnicities to assert themselves, sometimes in the most grotesque fashion…. We hardly need talk in this context of radical Islam, whose existence in the absence of the global oil market is unimaginable. Without America's global success, the undead of traditional society could not give voice to their rancor—much less finance it.
To love America is to acknowledge its special grace, namely that a nation founded not on ethnicity, language, or culture but rather upon the sanctity of individual rights will prevail, while the remains of traditional society are borne away by the current….
The coherence of traditional society imposes a structure on life, a structure so rigid that such societies cannot adapt to change and must crumble before encroaching empire. In return for the sanctity of individual rights, Americans are freed from the constraints of traditional society and made responsible for their own actions. For an American presidential candidate [Obama] to refer to traditional society as the model for the solution to American problems has no precedent. It is one thing to denounce American errors while upholding American principles. Never before has America considered electing a president who prefers the alternative, and that might just be the most dangerous thing to happen to the United States since its Civil War.
After listening to so much bad news and bad politics, this was a pleasure that had to be shared. It captures the essence of America's greatness although it attributes it to theist reasons rather than the Enlightenment one of the freedom of the individual mind - that solitary organ where thought, discovery and resulting knowledge that improves mankind's lot occurs. SCB
"America's Special Grace," "Spengler," Asia Times, July 8
Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America's influence in the world. America's enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies. America's influence in the world leapt as result of her victory in three world wars, including the fall of communism in 1989. Arguably, America is ascending even faster today, despite the reverses in its economic position and the strains on its military resources….
If America has been given a special grace, it is because its founders as well as every generation of its people have taken as the basis of America's legitimacy the Judeo-Christian belief that God loves every individual, and most of all the humblest. Rights under law, from the American vantage point, are sacred, not utilitarian, convenient or consensual….
It is an irony that globalization itself has provided the means to a handful of endangered ethnicities to assert themselves, sometimes in the most grotesque fashion…. We hardly need talk in this context of radical Islam, whose existence in the absence of the global oil market is unimaginable. Without America's global success, the undead of traditional society could not give voice to their rancor—much less finance it.
To love America is to acknowledge its special grace, namely that a nation founded not on ethnicity, language, or culture but rather upon the sanctity of individual rights will prevail, while the remains of traditional society are borne away by the current….
The coherence of traditional society imposes a structure on life, a structure so rigid that such societies cannot adapt to change and must crumble before encroaching empire. In return for the sanctity of individual rights, Americans are freed from the constraints of traditional society and made responsible for their own actions. For an American presidential candidate [Obama] to refer to traditional society as the model for the solution to American problems has no precedent. It is one thing to denounce American errors while upholding American principles. Never before has America considered electing a president who prefers the alternative, and that might just be the most dangerous thing to happen to the United States since its Civil War.
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Source of Frustration in Arguing Politics
This political season is one of the most frustrating experiences that a person who grasps principles as statements of values can have. The more one integrates his life based on fundamental principles and sees life related to these principles, the more he feels the threat of the constant assault on these principles. So many outlandish, even insane, statements are uttered with so many people, particularly the media, not delving in depth about serious topics, except to perhaps concoct elaborate theories as to the political strategy of one candidate versus another, it is nigh impossible to keep one's head in the matter. When I hear this, personally, I feel like "harumphing" and walking away. I want to yell at them. Sometimes I do.
Intelligence is the ability to act on one's rational thinking integrated to the widest context of which he is capable. If one selects a job, he is more intelligent if he selects it because it meets all of his criteria for selecting the job. If it is something he enjoys doing where he uses as many talents as he can, where he accomplishes career goals, where he earns the money for his current and future personal/family needs, where he is challenged and experiences self-esteem then he is selecting it from an integrated value structure. On the other hand if he selects it to make enough money to live hand to mouth and nothing else, he is not very intelligent.
Integration of all one's values and actions is key and it cannot be done without an integrated philosophy. When a political candidate says that he wants to raise taxes on the rich and create programs to benefit the poor, the integrated person is going to experience an assault on his values. If he is rich, he will experience the fact that his rational choices and actions are to be highjacked for a purpose not his own. His choices don't count except as a pack animal that must carry the poor. If he is poor he experiences the institution of this principle as the undercutting of the value of his rising and being successful. In either case, a future has been cut out from under him.
The unintelligent person doesn't experience this assault. He thinks he is getting a break and doesn't see how it limits his own future, nor does he see how the success of the men of ability are crucial to his own well being.
The intelligent person sees, e.g., that universal health care requires the doctor to be enslaved to a highly income-regulated program where the doctor's ambition and skill make no real difference for his future. Thus the motivation to be a doctor is undercut to the point where the men of ability forego a career in medicine. The intelligent person sees that health care must suffer and decline.
The unintelligent persons sees access to health care that he would otherwise not have and thinks he is better off. He doesn't see the consequences because he does not have an integrated knowledge base.
At this point in time, the country favors the government to regulate and dole out everything. Most people apparently look to government to solve every problem. Given these thoughtless premises, most people issue their opinions like a fait accompli.
To argue against this mess, you have to take a deep breath and get present to basic principles. Establishing those, you can then draw the proper conclusion.
The government is the institution which regulates the use of retaliatory force. That is its only proper function. When it initiates force against its citizens which it does when it forces them to pay for and use their programs, it abrogates the motivation of all individual human beings to make rational choices. Society cannot benefit from this enormous source of creativity and problem solving. Everything gets reduced to a few enforced courses of action. Men instead of being free have to ask permission to act. When force is instituted, choice is eliminated. When force is instituted, rationality is eliminated. When force is instituted, value is eliminated. When force is instituted, man turns from the creative heroic being that is possible for him to a slave - frustrated, whining and demanding. Life shifts from possibility to brutality.
With the politicians all saying how they will initiate force to cause what they want, we all know that we are being assaulted at some level. We are nervous and frustrated and the cause goes beyond high gas prices. The politicans are offending us and they don't even know it.
The answer is not another government program but political freedom. The answer is not a gun but an argument. Focus on the principles and argue away. With this, the frustration will disappear.
Intelligence is the ability to act on one's rational thinking integrated to the widest context of which he is capable. If one selects a job, he is more intelligent if he selects it because it meets all of his criteria for selecting the job. If it is something he enjoys doing where he uses as many talents as he can, where he accomplishes career goals, where he earns the money for his current and future personal/family needs, where he is challenged and experiences self-esteem then he is selecting it from an integrated value structure. On the other hand if he selects it to make enough money to live hand to mouth and nothing else, he is not very intelligent.
Integration of all one's values and actions is key and it cannot be done without an integrated philosophy. When a political candidate says that he wants to raise taxes on the rich and create programs to benefit the poor, the integrated person is going to experience an assault on his values. If he is rich, he will experience the fact that his rational choices and actions are to be highjacked for a purpose not his own. His choices don't count except as a pack animal that must carry the poor. If he is poor he experiences the institution of this principle as the undercutting of the value of his rising and being successful. In either case, a future has been cut out from under him.
The unintelligent person doesn't experience this assault. He thinks he is getting a break and doesn't see how it limits his own future, nor does he see how the success of the men of ability are crucial to his own well being.
The intelligent person sees, e.g., that universal health care requires the doctor to be enslaved to a highly income-regulated program where the doctor's ambition and skill make no real difference for his future. Thus the motivation to be a doctor is undercut to the point where the men of ability forego a career in medicine. The intelligent person sees that health care must suffer and decline.
The unintelligent persons sees access to health care that he would otherwise not have and thinks he is better off. He doesn't see the consequences because he does not have an integrated knowledge base.
At this point in time, the country favors the government to regulate and dole out everything. Most people apparently look to government to solve every problem. Given these thoughtless premises, most people issue their opinions like a fait accompli.
To argue against this mess, you have to take a deep breath and get present to basic principles. Establishing those, you can then draw the proper conclusion.
The government is the institution which regulates the use of retaliatory force. That is its only proper function. When it initiates force against its citizens which it does when it forces them to pay for and use their programs, it abrogates the motivation of all individual human beings to make rational choices. Society cannot benefit from this enormous source of creativity and problem solving. Everything gets reduced to a few enforced courses of action. Men instead of being free have to ask permission to act. When force is instituted, choice is eliminated. When force is instituted, rationality is eliminated. When force is instituted, value is eliminated. When force is instituted, man turns from the creative heroic being that is possible for him to a slave - frustrated, whining and demanding. Life shifts from possibility to brutality.
With the politicians all saying how they will initiate force to cause what they want, we all know that we are being assaulted at some level. We are nervous and frustrated and the cause goes beyond high gas prices. The politicans are offending us and they don't even know it.
The answer is not another government program but political freedom. The answer is not a gun but an argument. Focus on the principles and argue away. With this, the frustration will disappear.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
The Role of Spirituality in Politics
(This speech delivered to the Fellowship of Reason, July 6, 2008 http://www.fellowshipofreason.com/)
This year we are seeing a phenomenon in politics that I have not seen in my lifetime.
In the 60s, John and Jackie Kennedy added an esthetic level to politics with their youth, style and grace. They captured the imagination of the country and even though the election was close and the politics not especially noteworthy, they still are remembered by many as the high point for defining American presidential style.
This year we have the candidacy of Barack Obama. Although some people try to compare Barack and Michelle to the Kennedys, I don’t buy it and think it is a stretch. It is true, they are working on a classy presentation, but it doesn’t come off natural to them, at least for Michelle, in the way it was for the Kennedys.
But there is something natural to Obama: The spiritual.
He speaks in the measured cadence and repeated phrases of a practiced preacher. He is charismatic and eloquent. Girls swoon and faint when they get near him. The cheering and screaming in his presence goes beyond the meaning of what he is saying. Obama is the apotheosis of a rock star.
His candidacy is a spiritual quest. He promises hope and change. Don’t all spiritual quests imply hope for change? When one is filled with despair and life is meaningless, is not a spiritual quest needed? “Surely there must be something greater than, more exultant than my little life. I hope so. Obama says there is. Let me follow him.”
Obama has arrogated to himself the role of the person who is going to lead the way and heal the rancor of our divided, angry nation. Obama is going to have us rise above our pettiness and even suggests correcting our wrong-from-the-start actions. Follow him and we will transform this entire mess we find ourselves victim of.
When I go to Obama’s website, I find a beautiful website. Unlike the others, the graphics are extremely well done and consistent. For a political website, it is an extraordinary esthetic, i.e. spiritual, experience.
The colors are red, white and blue except they are not the navy blue and the robust red that we know as our country’s colors. Obama’s blue is a lighter, a medium blue with shading suggesting a sky. His red is a toned-down, slightly-grayed red such that it isn’t so definite nor bold. It is quieter, doesn’t excite too much, and let’s you be with it all without feeling threatened.
McCain’s site, on the other hand has a picture of him in front of furling flags of a deep blue background with white stars and gold fringe and is associated with the pomp and grandeur of the elected office. (This is not an endorsement of McCain - just a comparison of websites and what in us to which they appeal.)
Obama’s website’s header has Obama’s symbol of a rising sun over a red and white striped landscape placed over the right shoulder of a picture of Obama dressed in a white shirt and a silvery grey tie. A halo effect of a lighter sky surrounds his shoulders such that his white shirt and the whitened sky merge as one at some places of this image. To the right of this image are the words: “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.” At the bottom of the page is the statement: “This website is powered by Hope.”
Clearly Obama is appealing to spiritual aspirations of a different order than whatever McCain is appealing to. I don’t deny that the office of President of the United States has a spiritual component to it. My question is: What spiritually can our President provide? Asking that, maybe we can know whether Obama is on the right track in his spiritual appeal to America?
The United States has the clearest principled founding document in the world. In the Declaration of Independence, we declare that “all men are created equal with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - “
This agreement by which we live and true ourselves to in the course of our political life sets the standard for the spiritual nourishment that we need from the government. When our government is upholding this agreement and clearly acting in accordance with it, our spirit is buoyed and we feel confident to live our lives in the freedom that is ours by right. We are free to pursue our happiness. We are happy that our government is doing the job it was designed to do.
Witness the reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Second Amendment Right to keep and bear Arms. Many people got goosebumps when they heard this decision. This is the most life affirming court decision that I remember other than Roe vs. Wade, the decision affirming a woman’s right to her body. The United States may be the only country where the citizens may keep and bear Arms for the reason of keeping their politicians and government in check. With government running amok untethered by its duty to provide for our liberty, its about time we put these guys on notice.
When it does not uphold these principles and the lines of proper action are unclear, we become spiritually diminished and threatened. Upset, irritation and anger result.
There can be plenty of disagreement as to how to carry out the simple principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in fact, we all know that it is the nature of government to encroach on the rights of the people, infringe their liberty and impede their pursuit of happiness.
I assert that America’s spiritual health coincides with the government hewing itself to the principles for which it was founded.
Obama, however, is not presenting himself as a person committed to carrying out our founding principles stated. He nowhere refers to them and when asked about his view of one or more of them, he equivocates, coming down on both sides of the issue – as he did with the Second Amendment. He is committed to Change and Hope, two amorphous meaningless words nowhere in our defining documents. Change to what? Hope for what?
Because Obama is not grounded in the principles of our founding documents and there is a good bit of evidence to say that he simply doesn’t agree with them, believing instead in class warfare and the divisions among men, he must find an alternate spirituality with some attraction in order to attract voters. I say he is fashioning himself as The Savior – the one who will provide the change and the hope that those attracted to this kind of spirituality can go for. They’ve bought it many times before. Why wouldn’t they buy it now.
He is fashioning himself, not as a proponent of ideas, but as the personality that is going to take us to the Promised Land, that heaven beyond our ordinary lives. This is why I think his website graphics and preacher-ly cadences evoke these otherworldly associations.
As an aside, many of the emblems that designate constituencies he hopes to attract are basically a circle in a blue background. Each one is elaborated to designate that particular constituency. The circle in a blue field is reminiscent of the UN flag, a world organization, not a national organization. Again, “heaven” is beyond our ordinary lives and ordinary boundaries.
______________________________________
My conclusion is that his appeal to the kind of spirituality he seeks to evoke is fundamentally inappropriate to a political campaign in the United States of America.
______________________________________
The constant polling of people gives us data that he is winning. I don’t really believe them at this point primarily because the main stream media has been so wrong in its predictions of past elections. But, then again, they could be right.
There are two things that worry me most about this election. First, have the practical, logical, reasonable people who are responsible for their own lives and that constitute the bulk of this country slipped into the minority; and have those who think they can profit by punishing the rich corporations and individuals or feel guilty for the success they have achieved or think it is time for a man with a different skin color regardless of his ideas to run the country become the majority?
Second, will Obama as he confidently embraces contradiction upon contradiction and eschews being governed by reality take on the status of a God? When he embraced Bush’s faith based program and said he will make that program the moral center of his administration, I fell silent. This was a daringly bold move. He blew off all his past condemnations of Bush and any likenesses of Bush as even remotely viable in this election. He risked his Hate Bush constituency. With this action he no longer gave heed to foe or contradictory stands or anything by which we measure a man. He is in the process of extricating himself from the realm of ordinary man. Either he will find himself licking his wounds at the curb because we judge him absurd or we will be drawn to him because of our fascination. Maybe he will become an uberman. Will we raise Obama on high to lead us wherever HIS heart desires in any moment of OUR future?
Why do I NOT think that ANYONE’s spiritual future lies there?
This year we are seeing a phenomenon in politics that I have not seen in my lifetime.
In the 60s, John and Jackie Kennedy added an esthetic level to politics with their youth, style and grace. They captured the imagination of the country and even though the election was close and the politics not especially noteworthy, they still are remembered by many as the high point for defining American presidential style.
This year we have the candidacy of Barack Obama. Although some people try to compare Barack and Michelle to the Kennedys, I don’t buy it and think it is a stretch. It is true, they are working on a classy presentation, but it doesn’t come off natural to them, at least for Michelle, in the way it was for the Kennedys.
But there is something natural to Obama: The spiritual.
He speaks in the measured cadence and repeated phrases of a practiced preacher. He is charismatic and eloquent. Girls swoon and faint when they get near him. The cheering and screaming in his presence goes beyond the meaning of what he is saying. Obama is the apotheosis of a rock star.
His candidacy is a spiritual quest. He promises hope and change. Don’t all spiritual quests imply hope for change? When one is filled with despair and life is meaningless, is not a spiritual quest needed? “Surely there must be something greater than, more exultant than my little life. I hope so. Obama says there is. Let me follow him.”
Obama has arrogated to himself the role of the person who is going to lead the way and heal the rancor of our divided, angry nation. Obama is going to have us rise above our pettiness and even suggests correcting our wrong-from-the-start actions. Follow him and we will transform this entire mess we find ourselves victim of.
When I go to Obama’s website, I find a beautiful website. Unlike the others, the graphics are extremely well done and consistent. For a political website, it is an extraordinary esthetic, i.e. spiritual, experience.
The colors are red, white and blue except they are not the navy blue and the robust red that we know as our country’s colors. Obama’s blue is a lighter, a medium blue with shading suggesting a sky. His red is a toned-down, slightly-grayed red such that it isn’t so definite nor bold. It is quieter, doesn’t excite too much, and let’s you be with it all without feeling threatened.
McCain’s site, on the other hand has a picture of him in front of furling flags of a deep blue background with white stars and gold fringe and is associated with the pomp and grandeur of the elected office. (This is not an endorsement of McCain - just a comparison of websites and what in us to which they appeal.)
Obama’s website’s header has Obama’s symbol of a rising sun over a red and white striped landscape placed over the right shoulder of a picture of Obama dressed in a white shirt and a silvery grey tie. A halo effect of a lighter sky surrounds his shoulders such that his white shirt and the whitened sky merge as one at some places of this image. To the right of this image are the words: “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring about real change in Washington . . . I’m asking you to believe in yours.” At the bottom of the page is the statement: “This website is powered by Hope.”
Clearly Obama is appealing to spiritual aspirations of a different order than whatever McCain is appealing to. I don’t deny that the office of President of the United States has a spiritual component to it. My question is: What spiritually can our President provide? Asking that, maybe we can know whether Obama is on the right track in his spiritual appeal to America?
The United States has the clearest principled founding document in the world. In the Declaration of Independence, we declare that “all men are created equal with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness – that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - “
This agreement by which we live and true ourselves to in the course of our political life sets the standard for the spiritual nourishment that we need from the government. When our government is upholding this agreement and clearly acting in accordance with it, our spirit is buoyed and we feel confident to live our lives in the freedom that is ours by right. We are free to pursue our happiness. We are happy that our government is doing the job it was designed to do.
Witness the reaction to the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding the Second Amendment Right to keep and bear Arms. Many people got goosebumps when they heard this decision. This is the most life affirming court decision that I remember other than Roe vs. Wade, the decision affirming a woman’s right to her body. The United States may be the only country where the citizens may keep and bear Arms for the reason of keeping their politicians and government in check. With government running amok untethered by its duty to provide for our liberty, its about time we put these guys on notice.
When it does not uphold these principles and the lines of proper action are unclear, we become spiritually diminished and threatened. Upset, irritation and anger result.
There can be plenty of disagreement as to how to carry out the simple principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and in fact, we all know that it is the nature of government to encroach on the rights of the people, infringe their liberty and impede their pursuit of happiness.
I assert that America’s spiritual health coincides with the government hewing itself to the principles for which it was founded.
Obama, however, is not presenting himself as a person committed to carrying out our founding principles stated. He nowhere refers to them and when asked about his view of one or more of them, he equivocates, coming down on both sides of the issue – as he did with the Second Amendment. He is committed to Change and Hope, two amorphous meaningless words nowhere in our defining documents. Change to what? Hope for what?
Because Obama is not grounded in the principles of our founding documents and there is a good bit of evidence to say that he simply doesn’t agree with them, believing instead in class warfare and the divisions among men, he must find an alternate spirituality with some attraction in order to attract voters. I say he is fashioning himself as The Savior – the one who will provide the change and the hope that those attracted to this kind of spirituality can go for. They’ve bought it many times before. Why wouldn’t they buy it now.
He is fashioning himself, not as a proponent of ideas, but as the personality that is going to take us to the Promised Land, that heaven beyond our ordinary lives. This is why I think his website graphics and preacher-ly cadences evoke these otherworldly associations.
As an aside, many of the emblems that designate constituencies he hopes to attract are basically a circle in a blue background. Each one is elaborated to designate that particular constituency. The circle in a blue field is reminiscent of the UN flag, a world organization, not a national organization. Again, “heaven” is beyond our ordinary lives and ordinary boundaries.
______________________________________
My conclusion is that his appeal to the kind of spirituality he seeks to evoke is fundamentally inappropriate to a political campaign in the United States of America.
______________________________________
The constant polling of people gives us data that he is winning. I don’t really believe them at this point primarily because the main stream media has been so wrong in its predictions of past elections. But, then again, they could be right.
There are two things that worry me most about this election. First, have the practical, logical, reasonable people who are responsible for their own lives and that constitute the bulk of this country slipped into the minority; and have those who think they can profit by punishing the rich corporations and individuals or feel guilty for the success they have achieved or think it is time for a man with a different skin color regardless of his ideas to run the country become the majority?
Second, will Obama as he confidently embraces contradiction upon contradiction and eschews being governed by reality take on the status of a God? When he embraced Bush’s faith based program and said he will make that program the moral center of his administration, I fell silent. This was a daringly bold move. He blew off all his past condemnations of Bush and any likenesses of Bush as even remotely viable in this election. He risked his Hate Bush constituency. With this action he no longer gave heed to foe or contradictory stands or anything by which we measure a man. He is in the process of extricating himself from the realm of ordinary man. Either he will find himself licking his wounds at the curb because we judge him absurd or we will be drawn to him because of our fascination. Maybe he will become an uberman. Will we raise Obama on high to lead us wherever HIS heart desires in any moment of OUR future?
Why do I NOT think that ANYONE’s spiritual future lies there?
Friday, July 4, 2008
Why Do We 'Keep and Bear Arms'?
This is very good and the reason that I'm so heartened by the Supreme Courts recent decision. This puts the fear of God in the politicians and they have really needed that given that they have become a law unto themselves, divorced from us. I don't know where this may have originally appeared. I got it from The Atlasphere, a website where the lovers of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead may meet and share common values. SCB
Opinion Editorial by Larry Elder - Jul 4, 2008
In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision affirming an individual right to gun ownership, now seems an appropriate time to remember why, historically, the right to "keep and bear arms" is so vital to freedom.
A prominent 20th-century Democrat made the following statement about the purpose of the Second Amendment: “Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. ... “The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
Recently the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, struck down the 1976 Washington, DC, ban on handguns. The court ruled that the Founding Fathers wanted the Second Amendment to allow individuals the right to keep and bear arms. The minority disagreed, arguing that the right only extends to those belonging to a state “militia,” such as the National Guard.
The Second Amendment reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” What did the Framers mean?
Did the framers intend “Militia” to be an arm of government? Or did the Framers define militia as something completely different — a group of armed citizens with a right to “keep and bear Arms” to guard against unjust or tyrannical government power?
The Founding Fathers assumed that any government, including the one they established, could grow into a monster. They argued that only “the people” with a right “to keep and bear arms” could prevent such a tyranny.
James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” stated that tyrants were “afraid to trust the people with arms,” and lauded “the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
George Mason said, “To disarm the people — that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts said: “What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
Noah Webster, the prominent political essayist who fought in the Revolutionary War, wrote: “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
“A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
Samuel Adams likened the Second Amendment to the First: “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Dictators throughout history sought to disarm their citizenries in order to impose power:
Vladimir Lenin said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”
Mao Zedong said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Josef Stalin said: “We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?”
Adolf Hitler said: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.”
Thomas Paine, in 1775, spoke about another kind of “tyranny.” Bans and restrictions on firearms affect the law-abiding citizenry, shifting power to the non-law-abiding. Criminals ignore laws. That’s why we call them criminals.
Paine said: “The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. ... (Weakness) allures the ruffian (but) arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were (the good) deprived of the use of them. ... The weak will become a prey to the strong.”
Oh, the prominent Democrat quoted in the first paragraph? It was said Oct. 22, 1959, by future senator and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. How times — and much of the Democratic Party — have changed.
Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk-show host and the author of Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America.
Opinion Editorial by Larry Elder - Jul 4, 2008
In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision affirming an individual right to gun ownership, now seems an appropriate time to remember why, historically, the right to "keep and bear arms" is so vital to freedom.
A prominent 20th-century Democrat made the following statement about the purpose of the Second Amendment: “Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. ... “The right of citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard, against the tyranny which now appears remote in America but which historically has proven to be always possible.”
Recently the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision, struck down the 1976 Washington, DC, ban on handguns. The court ruled that the Founding Fathers wanted the Second Amendment to allow individuals the right to keep and bear arms. The minority disagreed, arguing that the right only extends to those belonging to a state “militia,” such as the National Guard.
The Second Amendment reads as follows: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” What did the Framers mean?
Did the framers intend “Militia” to be an arm of government? Or did the Framers define militia as something completely different — a group of armed citizens with a right to “keep and bear Arms” to guard against unjust or tyrannical government power?
The Founding Fathers assumed that any government, including the one they established, could grow into a monster. They argued that only “the people” with a right “to keep and bear arms” could prevent such a tyranny.
James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” stated that tyrants were “afraid to trust the people with arms,” and lauded “the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote: “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.”
George Mason said, “To disarm the people — that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them.”
Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts said: “What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty.... Whenever governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia, in order to raise an army upon their ruins.”
Noah Webster, the prominent political essayist who fought in the Revolutionary War, wrote: “Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States.
“A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.”
Samuel Adams likened the Second Amendment to the First: “That the said Constitution shall never be construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the press or the rights of conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.”
Dictators throughout history sought to disarm their citizenries in order to impose power:
Vladimir Lenin said, “One man with a gun can control 100 without one.”
Mao Zedong said, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Josef Stalin said: “We don’t let them have ideas. Why would we let them have guns?”
Adolf Hitler said: “The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by doing so.”
Thomas Paine, in 1775, spoke about another kind of “tyranny.” Bans and restrictions on firearms affect the law-abiding citizenry, shifting power to the non-law-abiding. Criminals ignore laws. That’s why we call them criminals.
Paine said: “The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defense. ... (Weakness) allures the ruffian (but) arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and plunderer in awe and preserve order in the world. ... Horrid mischief would ensue were (the good) deprived of the use of them. ... The weak will become a prey to the strong.”
Oh, the prominent Democrat quoted in the first paragraph? It was said Oct. 22, 1959, by future senator and Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. How times — and much of the Democratic Party — have changed.
Larry Elder is a syndicated radio talk-show host and the author of Showdown: Confronting Bias, Lies, and the Special Interests That Divide America.
Who Upholds Freedom Most - "Conservative" or "Liberal" Judges?
Here is an interesting comparison of the "liberal" and "conservative" Judges of the Supreme Court. What is being born out is that "conservative" judges tend to uphold freedom and individual rights; "liberal" judges tend to uphold and advance State control over the individual. The "conservative" judges honor your life; the "liberal" judges hand you over to the State.
This by no means is 100% true nor 100% consistent. But, it is going this direction. I'm thinking we have a philosophical dialogue on individual rights as the basis of how we organize ourselves as a society in our future. Read this:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9511
I placed the quote marks around "conservative" and "liberal" as I don't think those terms are accurate representations of the underlying premises of those groups. The means of referring to the emerging orientations may better be served by Individual Rightists vs. Statists.
This by no means is 100% true nor 100% consistent. But, it is going this direction. I'm thinking we have a philosophical dialogue on individual rights as the basis of how we organize ourselves as a society in our future. Read this:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9511
I placed the quote marks around "conservative" and "liberal" as I don't think those terms are accurate representations of the underlying premises of those groups. The means of referring to the emerging orientations may better be served by Individual Rightists vs. Statists.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Voting
I've been speaking out against Obama and people are getting that I don't want him for my President. This is true. But then, they ask, "McCain isn't much of a leader either, so what does he have worth voting for?"
First of all as of now there are three candidates for whom to vote: Obama, McCain and Barr of the Libertarian Party. I rule out the Libertarian Party because of its flawed base and its existence only makes the battle for liberty harder, not easier. I would much rather distinguish the liberty position from the statist positions of the Democrats and the Republicans than I would from the anarchist and amoral positions of the Libertarians.
I dislike Obama because I'm convinced that he will say anything, do anything and be anything to get and keep, when he gets it, power. I do not think he is a saint nor do I think he will ascend into those blue skies and white puffy clouds on his website unless he disintegrates before our eyes - which he is really working to have happen.
I definitely do not trust his Marxist past - 20 years sitting in a Black Liberation Theology church listening to a rabid racist preacher who, while a free man in the United States, is willing to blame America to its roots including the very principles of individual rights on which it is founded. I'm not willing to give those up, are you? For what? So one man or a group of men can dominate and force you by law, and you have no founding document of your individual rights on which to build your case?
Reverend Wright is about revenge not freedom. There is nothing to make up when you are free. Life begins anew and you are free to make of it what you can. That is as good as it gets in a political system. If you don't rise to the occasion, you designate yourself a victim and then you have to get back. To gain power to now dominate someone else is invalid as a workable idea and can only lead to war and rumors of war.
Included in Obama's Marxist past is his association with the domestic terrorists, Ayers and Dohrn, who subscribe to the same Marxist beliefs. Marxism is about class warfare. It is about setting one man against another in principle. It justifies any kind of violence based on one's prefabricated victim status. It leads nowhere. Countries set up on that principle have failed or will fail. (I can see it now if Obama is President. He invites Ayers and Dohrn to the White House. They, who have bemoaned that they never caused as much destruction as they would have liked, leave a package in a cloak closet. Boom! I do think this idea is silly, but I'm pointing up the inconsistency of a victim who wants to right a wrong by force when there is a civil mechanism to do so. Since Obama throws Wright and Ayers under the bus, can we get a promise out of him that he will never invite them to the White House? )
I don't want any of this governing our country and I don't want any of this choosing our Supreme Court judges. Simple as that.
This leaves McCain. McCain does not hold my view of government as the protector of individual rights. He definitely is a statist. There are two things that I like about McCain. He is able to articulate his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the country and for all of us. Obama articulates his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the poor and the least among us. Obama sets up the class warfare situation and McCain does not. I consider this difference a plus for McCain. (Under my Favorite Websites and Links see "From Each According to His Ability..." as a demonstration of the consequences to a society that sets up this principle.)
Next, I think McCain, if he does what he says he will do, will choose Supreme Court judges that are originalists - that is people who will interpret the Constitution based on the principles that generated it and are displayed there. (I, by the way, do not see an originalist as anti-abortion. I know many people do. I consider the right to abortion as the woman's right to her body and thus a derivative of her right to her life. A fetus, until it is born and has independent existence, is a function of her body and her life. It is absurd to claim that a fetus has a right to life which then sets up, in principle, a conflict of rights. There are no conflicts regarding rights. When she gets pregnant, she does not become the property of and thus under the direction of the state. Her body is her property - her fundamental property. Pregnancy does not convert her into a slave. The religious fundamentalist be damned on this point!) Developing law based on the principle of individual rights is vitally important to our getting our freedoms back. They are ours by right. Until this gets straightened out, we are not free. This is a vital issue.
So at this point, I'm voting for McCain.
You notice, I have not mentioned the war. I don't think either one of the candidates are going to abandon the results that we have achieved in the Middle East. I don't think it is the distinguishing issue. I do think that McCain will be a more capable Commander-in-Chief than will Obama. I think he can stand, if he has to, by a decision that can get unpopular. I don't see that quality in Obama.
First of all as of now there are three candidates for whom to vote: Obama, McCain and Barr of the Libertarian Party. I rule out the Libertarian Party because of its flawed base and its existence only makes the battle for liberty harder, not easier. I would much rather distinguish the liberty position from the statist positions of the Democrats and the Republicans than I would from the anarchist and amoral positions of the Libertarians.
I dislike Obama because I'm convinced that he will say anything, do anything and be anything to get and keep, when he gets it, power. I do not think he is a saint nor do I think he will ascend into those blue skies and white puffy clouds on his website unless he disintegrates before our eyes - which he is really working to have happen.
I definitely do not trust his Marxist past - 20 years sitting in a Black Liberation Theology church listening to a rabid racist preacher who, while a free man in the United States, is willing to blame America to its roots including the very principles of individual rights on which it is founded. I'm not willing to give those up, are you? For what? So one man or a group of men can dominate and force you by law, and you have no founding document of your individual rights on which to build your case?
Reverend Wright is about revenge not freedom. There is nothing to make up when you are free. Life begins anew and you are free to make of it what you can. That is as good as it gets in a political system. If you don't rise to the occasion, you designate yourself a victim and then you have to get back. To gain power to now dominate someone else is invalid as a workable idea and can only lead to war and rumors of war.
Included in Obama's Marxist past is his association with the domestic terrorists, Ayers and Dohrn, who subscribe to the same Marxist beliefs. Marxism is about class warfare. It is about setting one man against another in principle. It justifies any kind of violence based on one's prefabricated victim status. It leads nowhere. Countries set up on that principle have failed or will fail. (I can see it now if Obama is President. He invites Ayers and Dohrn to the White House. They, who have bemoaned that they never caused as much destruction as they would have liked, leave a package in a cloak closet. Boom! I do think this idea is silly, but I'm pointing up the inconsistency of a victim who wants to right a wrong by force when there is a civil mechanism to do so. Since Obama throws Wright and Ayers under the bus, can we get a promise out of him that he will never invite them to the White House? )
I don't want any of this governing our country and I don't want any of this choosing our Supreme Court judges. Simple as that.
This leaves McCain. McCain does not hold my view of government as the protector of individual rights. He definitely is a statist. There are two things that I like about McCain. He is able to articulate his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the country and for all of us. Obama articulates his claims on our lives in terms of sacrifice for the poor and the least among us. Obama sets up the class warfare situation and McCain does not. I consider this difference a plus for McCain. (Under my Favorite Websites and Links see "From Each According to His Ability..." as a demonstration of the consequences to a society that sets up this principle.)
Next, I think McCain, if he does what he says he will do, will choose Supreme Court judges that are originalists - that is people who will interpret the Constitution based on the principles that generated it and are displayed there. (I, by the way, do not see an originalist as anti-abortion. I know many people do. I consider the right to abortion as the woman's right to her body and thus a derivative of her right to her life. A fetus, until it is born and has independent existence, is a function of her body and her life. It is absurd to claim that a fetus has a right to life which then sets up, in principle, a conflict of rights. There are no conflicts regarding rights. When she gets pregnant, she does not become the property of and thus under the direction of the state. Her body is her property - her fundamental property. Pregnancy does not convert her into a slave. The religious fundamentalist be damned on this point!) Developing law based on the principle of individual rights is vitally important to our getting our freedoms back. They are ours by right. Until this gets straightened out, we are not free. This is a vital issue.
So at this point, I'm voting for McCain.
You notice, I have not mentioned the war. I don't think either one of the candidates are going to abandon the results that we have achieved in the Middle East. I don't think it is the distinguishing issue. I do think that McCain will be a more capable Commander-in-Chief than will Obama. I think he can stand, if he has to, by a decision that can get unpopular. I don't see that quality in Obama.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
This is John Galt Speaking
Here is a project
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_qQt9IrUc0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpo3OoyUUUc&feature=related
Part 3&4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-kTeWozXQ&feature=related
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKYX_o-g-b0&feature=related
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ajrwka2RE&feature=related
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJJC-J2g7A&feature=related
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJJC-J2g7A&feature=related
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16N_76mlsMk&feature=related
Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4oehFZI-k&feature=related
Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWKaFrQ4f4&feature=related
Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03sQzS-pM8&feature=related
Part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSXqFUtKD4&feature=related
Part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSXqFUtKD4&feature=related
Part 15: The final segment is not done. See the invitation to be a part of it.
Invitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_qQt9IrUc0
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpo3OoyUUUc&feature=related
Part 3&4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-kTeWozXQ&feature=related
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKYX_o-g-b0&feature=related
Part 6: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ajrwka2RE&feature=related
Part 7: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJJC-J2g7A&feature=related
Part 8: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyJJC-J2g7A&feature=related
Part 9: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16N_76mlsMk&feature=related
Part 10: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-4oehFZI-k&feature=related
Part 11: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWKaFrQ4f4&feature=related
Part 12: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I03sQzS-pM8&feature=related
Part 13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSXqFUtKD4&feature=related
Part 14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkSXqFUtKD4&feature=related
Part 15: The final segment is not done. See the invitation to be a part of it.
Invitation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VCc0PfIX6Q&NR=1
Friday, June 20, 2008
Money by Consent NOT Force
Here is a well done lecture on the purpose of money. Given that grounding it is clear that legal tender laws strip you of your power.
This lecture is by Mr. Paul McKeever. His many videos are on YouTube. His blog is http://blog.paulmckeever.ca/.
This lecture is by Mr. Paul McKeever. His many videos are on YouTube. His blog is http://blog.paulmckeever.ca/.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Only Path To Tomorrow
Ayn Rand
Readers Digest, January 1944, pp. 88-90
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group — whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ``the common good.´´
Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing ``the common good.´´ Napoleon ``served the common good´´ of France. Hitler is ``serving the common good´´ of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by ``altruists´´ who justify themselves by the common good.
No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor.
This is the basic tenet of individualism, as opposed to collectivism. Individualism holds that man is an independent entity with an inalienable right to the pursuit of his own happiness in a society where men deal with one another as equals.
The American system is founded on individualism. If it is to survive, we must understand the principles of individualism and hold them as our standard in any public question, in every issue we face. We must have a positive credo, a clear consistent faith.
We must learn to reject as total evil the conception that the common good is served by the abolition of individual rights. General happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-immolation. The only happy society is one of happy individuals. One cannot have a healthy forest made up of rotten trees.
The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual.
The right of liberty means man's right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.
The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men.
These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims. Society can only be a traffic policeman in the intercourse of men with one another.
From the beginning of history, two antagonists have stood face to face, two opposite types of men: the Active and the Passive. The Active Man is the producer, the creator, the originator, the individualist. His basic need is independence — in order to think and work. He neither needs nor seeks power over other men — nor can he be made to work under any form of compulsion. Every type of good work — from laying bricks to writing a symphony — is done by the Active Man. Degrees of human ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence and initiative determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man.
The Passive Man is found on every level of society, in mansions and in slums, and his identification mark is his dread of independence. He is a parasite who expects to be taken care of by others, who wishes to be given directives, to obey, to submit, to be regulated, to be told. He welcomes collectivism, which eliminates any chance that he might have to think or act on his own initiative.
When a society is based on the needs of the Passive Man it destroys the Active; but when the Active is destroyed, the Passive can no longer be cared for. When a society is based on the needs of the Active Man, he carries the Passive ones along on his energy and raises them as he rises, as the whole society rises. This has been the pattern of all human progress.
Some humanitarians demand a collective state because of their pity for the incompetent or Passive Man. For his sake they wish to harness the Active. But the Active Man cannot function in harness. And once he is destroyed, the destruction of the Passive Man follows automatically. So if pity is the humanitarians' first consideration, then in the name of pity, if nothing else, they should leave the Active Man free to function, in order to help the Passive. There is no other way to help him in the long run.
The history of mankind is the history of the struggle between the Active Man and the Passive, between the individual and the collective. The countries which have produced the happiest men, the highest standards of living and the greatest cultural advances have been the countries where the power of the collective — of the government, of the state — was limited and the individual was given freedom of independent action. As examples: The rise of Rome, with its conception of law based on a citizen's rights, over the collectivist barbarism of its time. The rise of England, with a system of government based on the Magna Carta, over collectivist, totalitarian Spain. The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history — by grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.
While men are still pondering upon the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, every page of history cries to us that there is but one source of progress: Individual Man in independent action. Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage's whole existence is ruled by the leaders of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
We are now facing a choice: to go forward or to go back.
Collectivism is not the ``New Order of Tomorrow.´´ It is the order of a very dark yesterday. But there is a New Order of Tomorrow. It belongs to Individual Man — the only creator of any tomorrows humanity has ever been granted.
Ayn Rand
Readers Digest, January 1944, pp. 88-90
The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
Totalitarianism is collectivism. Collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group — whether to a race, class or state does not matter. Collectivism holds that man must be chained to collective action and collective thought for the sake of what is called ``the common good.´´
Throughout history, no tyrant ever rose to power except on the claim of representing ``the common good.´´ Napoleon ``served the common good´´ of France. Hitler is ``serving the common good´´ of Germany. Horrors which no man would dare consider for his own selfish sake are perpetrated with a clear conscience by ``altruists´´ who justify themselves by the common good.
No tyrant has ever lasted long by force of arms alone. Men have been enslaved primarily by spiritual weapons. And the greatest of these is the collectivist doctrine that the supremacy of the state over the individual constitutes the common good. No dictator could rise if men held as a sacred faith the conviction that they have inalienable rights of which they cannot be deprived for any cause whatsoever, by any man whatsoever, neither by evildoer nor supposed benefactor.
This is the basic tenet of individualism, as opposed to collectivism. Individualism holds that man is an independent entity with an inalienable right to the pursuit of his own happiness in a society where men deal with one another as equals.
The American system is founded on individualism. If it is to survive, we must understand the principles of individualism and hold them as our standard in any public question, in every issue we face. We must have a positive credo, a clear consistent faith.
We must learn to reject as total evil the conception that the common good is served by the abolition of individual rights. General happiness cannot be created out of general suffering and self-immolation. The only happy society is one of happy individuals. One cannot have a healthy forest made up of rotten trees.
The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual.
The right of liberty means man's right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.
The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men.
These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims. Society can only be a traffic policeman in the intercourse of men with one another.
From the beginning of history, two antagonists have stood face to face, two opposite types of men: the Active and the Passive. The Active Man is the producer, the creator, the originator, the individualist. His basic need is independence — in order to think and work. He neither needs nor seeks power over other men — nor can he be made to work under any form of compulsion. Every type of good work — from laying bricks to writing a symphony — is done by the Active Man. Degrees of human ability vary, but the basic principle remains the same: the degree of a man's independence and initiative determines his talent as a worker and his worth as a man.
The Passive Man is found on every level of society, in mansions and in slums, and his identification mark is his dread of independence. He is a parasite who expects to be taken care of by others, who wishes to be given directives, to obey, to submit, to be regulated, to be told. He welcomes collectivism, which eliminates any chance that he might have to think or act on his own initiative.
When a society is based on the needs of the Passive Man it destroys the Active; but when the Active is destroyed, the Passive can no longer be cared for. When a society is based on the needs of the Active Man, he carries the Passive ones along on his energy and raises them as he rises, as the whole society rises. This has been the pattern of all human progress.
Some humanitarians demand a collective state because of their pity for the incompetent or Passive Man. For his sake they wish to harness the Active. But the Active Man cannot function in harness. And once he is destroyed, the destruction of the Passive Man follows automatically. So if pity is the humanitarians' first consideration, then in the name of pity, if nothing else, they should leave the Active Man free to function, in order to help the Passive. There is no other way to help him in the long run.
The history of mankind is the history of the struggle between the Active Man and the Passive, between the individual and the collective. The countries which have produced the happiest men, the highest standards of living and the greatest cultural advances have been the countries where the power of the collective — of the government, of the state — was limited and the individual was given freedom of independent action. As examples: The rise of Rome, with its conception of law based on a citizen's rights, over the collectivist barbarism of its time. The rise of England, with a system of government based on the Magna Carta, over collectivist, totalitarian Spain. The rise of the United States to a degree of achievement unequaled in history — by grace of the individual freedom and independence which our Constitution gave each citizen against the collective.
While men are still pondering upon the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, every page of history cries to us that there is but one source of progress: Individual Man in independent action. Collectivism is the ancient principle of savagery. A savage's whole existence is ruled by the leaders of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
We are now facing a choice: to go forward or to go back.
Collectivism is not the ``New Order of Tomorrow.´´ It is the order of a very dark yesterday. But there is a New Order of Tomorrow. It belongs to Individual Man — the only creator of any tomorrows humanity has ever been granted.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Obama Boggles My Mind
Today McCain, in the wake of rapidly rising fuel prices and their myriad consequences, switched his position stating the United States needs to increase domestic oil production. This issue has hit a nerve. People are sending drill bits to Congress to make the point that we need to drill for oil. The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial a week ago entitled Drill, Drill, Drill. This is a genuine grass roots movements to get the politicians off center and into action regarding our energy supply.
What did Obama say? "McCain is pandering to the big oil companies."
What? What an insult!!! An outrageous insult!!!
Who can be that oblivious to what people are saying? When the electorate has generally had it with politicians because they cannot hear us nor care a whit about us, (fighting more for their earmarks and expanding their control over us and charging us for it) Obama has the audacity to ignore this public outcry and interpret McCain's switch as pandering.
What in hell's name would cause him to say this?
I say this is the evidence that Obama is committed to his political agenda: Damn business. Undermine business. Get control over business. Ultimately, the government takeover of business. (Remember that slip by Maxine Waters, a fellow socialist? http://principlex.blogspot.com/2008/05/mask-of-liberalism-slipped.html) This is consistent with his oft-cited Marxist influences and given these ideas, appeasing big business would be a sellout - which is what he accuses McCain of doing. His candidacy is not about the American people nor our country. (I am even suspicious he has deep feeling for this country.) We are a means, not an end. Because he has changed his positions so many times depending on his audience, whatever he says that sounds like he cares IS pandering.
Pandering? For what?
Power, more power, ultimate power - the ultimate purpose of political rabble rousing he learned from his mentor, Saul Alinksky. Power not for a purpose we can all be included in, but power for its own sake. Obama is damned ambitious.
For these reasons, I think Obama is the worse. He and McCain expect us to sacrifice. Neither understands political liberty and both are moving away from freedom. McCain calls us to sacrifice for the country. Obama calls us to sacrifice for the underdog. Except Obama is NOT FOR the underdog. He is against success. Should an underdog become successful, he will undermine them as he does all of the successful. He uses the underdog, the weakest among us, as a reason to undermine, steal from and silence the successful. His ideas, and he as a purveyor of them, is viscious. He portrays the rich as evil exploiters even though he and Michelle made over a million dollars last year. At this point it gets too crazy for me to understand. There must be some massive divide in his mind.
Another discouraging thing I am hearing is that many people, black and white, think that electing Obama is an historic opportunity to show the world we have grown beyond our racist past. According to them, skin color at this point in history should determine our vote for President. Since Obama is motivated by the same ideas as were Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Castro, what is this going to do for any of us including those among us with black skins? If color is the essential characteristic that one should pay attention to, then what effect will that have for future blacks politicians? When due to his vicious ideas his presidency turns out a bust, will the bumper sticker be "Obama, the black mistake?"
Feelings are not a means of cognition nor a guide to action. Rationality is the first virtue.
What did Obama say? "McCain is pandering to the big oil companies."
What? What an insult!!! An outrageous insult!!!
Who can be that oblivious to what people are saying? When the electorate has generally had it with politicians because they cannot hear us nor care a whit about us, (fighting more for their earmarks and expanding their control over us and charging us for it) Obama has the audacity to ignore this public outcry and interpret McCain's switch as pandering.
What in hell's name would cause him to say this?
I say this is the evidence that Obama is committed to his political agenda: Damn business. Undermine business. Get control over business. Ultimately, the government takeover of business. (Remember that slip by Maxine Waters, a fellow socialist? http://principlex.blogspot.com/2008/05/mask-of-liberalism-slipped.html) This is consistent with his oft-cited Marxist influences and given these ideas, appeasing big business would be a sellout - which is what he accuses McCain of doing. His candidacy is not about the American people nor our country. (I am even suspicious he has deep feeling for this country.) We are a means, not an end. Because he has changed his positions so many times depending on his audience, whatever he says that sounds like he cares IS pandering.
Pandering? For what?
Power, more power, ultimate power - the ultimate purpose of political rabble rousing he learned from his mentor, Saul Alinksky. Power not for a purpose we can all be included in, but power for its own sake. Obama is damned ambitious.
For these reasons, I think Obama is the worse. He and McCain expect us to sacrifice. Neither understands political liberty and both are moving away from freedom. McCain calls us to sacrifice for the country. Obama calls us to sacrifice for the underdog. Except Obama is NOT FOR the underdog. He is against success. Should an underdog become successful, he will undermine them as he does all of the successful. He uses the underdog, the weakest among us, as a reason to undermine, steal from and silence the successful. His ideas, and he as a purveyor of them, is viscious. He portrays the rich as evil exploiters even though he and Michelle made over a million dollars last year. At this point it gets too crazy for me to understand. There must be some massive divide in his mind.
Another discouraging thing I am hearing is that many people, black and white, think that electing Obama is an historic opportunity to show the world we have grown beyond our racist past. According to them, skin color at this point in history should determine our vote for President. Since Obama is motivated by the same ideas as were Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Castro, what is this going to do for any of us including those among us with black skins? If color is the essential characteristic that one should pay attention to, then what effect will that have for future blacks politicians? When due to his vicious ideas his presidency turns out a bust, will the bumper sticker be "Obama, the black mistake?"
Feelings are not a means of cognition nor a guide to action. Rationality is the first virtue.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
A Beacon from the Wilderness
A friend sent me this article from the Los Angeles Times. Such an inspiration. Enjoy it. Here is a man that has no space for the "victim mentality", the people who use it nor those who prey on people by means of it. (Principlex)
Leftist Thinking Left Off the Syllabus
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 6, 2008
Guatemala City: Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University.
For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court.Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is affixed to the school of business. Students celebrated the novel's 50th anniversary last year with an essay contest. The $200 cash prize reinforced the book's message that society should reward capitalist go-getters who create wealth and jobs, not punish them with taxes and regulations."The poor are not poor just because others are rich," said Manuel Francisco Ayau Cordon, a feisty octogenarian businessman, staunch anti-communist and founder of the school. "It's not a zero-sum game."Welcome to Guatemala's Libertarian U. Ayau opened the college in 1972, fed up with what he viewed as the "socialist" instruction being imparted at San Carlos University of Guatemala, the nation's largest institution of higher learning. He named the new school for a colonial-era priest who worked to liberate native Guatemalans from exploitation by Spanish overlords.Ayau believed universities should stay out of politics and "place themselves beyond the conflicts of their time." Easier said than done, considering that at the time, Guatemala was under military rule and in the midst of a civil war.A CIA-backed coup in 1954 had toppled the country's democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. His proposal to redistribute unoccupied land to peasants infuriated the nation's largest landowner, U.S.-based United Fruit Co., and stoked fears in Washington that Guatemala would become a Soviet satellite. Arbenz's ouster unleashed a bloody internal conflict that lasted nearly four decades.Whereas San Carlos University actively aided leftist guerrillas, Francisco Marroquin preached the sanctity of private property rights and the rule of law. The cheeky Ayau chose red as the school's official color "on the theory that it had been expropriated by the communists and we shouldn't cede them exclusivity." He wore a bulletproof vest under his academic gown at the first graduation ceremony.Tensions have mellowed since peace accords were signed in 1996. The same cannot be said of Ayau, whose nicknames include "the curmudgeon" and "Muso," short for the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. His once-ragtag school now ranks among the finest in Central America. And he continues to irritate diverse factions of this impoverished nation with his unshakable faith in free markets, personal liberty, small government and his insistence on "no privileges for anybody."Some leftists deride him as a lackey of the ruling classes, dishing up neo-liberal dogma to rich kids in a nation where a few powerful families still call most of the shots. Conservative elites chafe at his op-ed harangues about their cozy oligopolies and government protections.Ayau delights at the potshots coming his way from both ends of the political spectrum: They signal that someone is listening."Ideas are powerful," he crowed recently, showing a visitor an auditorium named for the late American free-market economist Milton Friedman. "We're making progress."Ayau's unflagging passions have turned Guatemala into an unlikely whistle-stop for all manner of capitalist luminaries.Friedman, the University of Chicago economist, was one of four Nobel laureates in economics to have lectured at Francisco Marroquin. The school has bestowed honorary doctorates on billionaire publisher Steve Forbes and T.J. Rogers, the swashbuckling chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor Corp.John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20," was honored this year on campus, as much for his ideology as his Emmy awards. An avowed libertarian, Stossel got a warm reception for his discourse against government regulation."We celebrate the message that this university teaches because economic freedom makes everybody's life better," Stossel said to rousing applause.No matter that Francisco Marroquin has made little headway in its own backyard.Today, more than half of Guatemala's population of 13 million lives in poverty. Namibia and Botswana rank higher than Guatemala on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. Guatemala is one of the most corrupt nations in the hemisphere, according to Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization. Land ownership is concentrated in few hands. Key industries such as sugar are controlled by powerful oligopolies that saddle poor consumers with high prices.
"They are insatiable," Ayau said.Still, Ayau points to a few small victories. Francisco Marroquin graduates were among the key architects of the 1996 deregulation of Guatemala's telecommunications industry. The country now boasts a competitive sector with some of the lowest rates in Latin America. About three-quarters of the population have mobile phones.
Francisco Marroquin "is like this little gem in the middle of this region," said Donald Boudreaux, a George Mason University economist who has lectured at the university. "It has a sterling reputation." How a small Guatemalan college became the darling of free-market circles has everything to do with Ayau, a charmingly abrasive dynamo who looks nowhere near his 82 years of age. Born into a middle-class family in Guatemala, Ayau spent much of his youth in the United States, where his mother moved for a time after his father's death. He attended Catholic high school in Belmont, Calif., then headed to the University of Toronto, where he studied chemical engineering. He dropped out after reading Rand's "Fountainhead." The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is expelled from architecture school after refusing to conform to its tired standards. "I realized when I read Rand . . . that I was starting out my life all wrong," Ayau said. He said he concluded that "I have to study something that I like, otherwise I'll never be any good." Ayau eventually earned a mechanical engineering degree at Louisiana State University and returned to Guatemala to work in the family's industrial gas firm. He joined a business council that lobbied the government on various issues. But favors granted to specific people and industries didn't make Guatemala grow any faster. Ayau wondered what role the state should play to ensure that everyone had a crack at prosperity. So he set out to teach himself economics. One of the first books on his list was "The Affluent Society," a 1958 bestseller by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. A longtime Democratic Party advisor, Galbraith believed that government spending on healthcare, education, infrastructure and anti-poverty programs was essential to society's well-being. Galbraith wrote that "wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding." Ayau wasn't persuaded. "I read the first two pages and I said, 'This guy is nuts!'" he recalled. He later picked up a pamphlet by Ludwig von Mises, a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics. Considered one of the fathers of modern libertarianism, Mises abhorred state intervention in the economy. He believed that open markets, individual choice, private property and the rule of law were the means to a prosperous society. Something clicked. Ayau read everything he could find by Mises, Friedrich Hayek and other Austrian School economists. He started a small discussion group among some Guatemalan friends and eventually traveled to New York to attend lectures at the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank. Through contacts there he met Mises and others whose works he'd been reading. At Ayau's urging, several traveled to Guatemala to speak to his tiny band of free marketeers, who by now were calling themselves the Center for Economic and Social Studies. The center published pamphlets, wrote newspaper op-ed pieces and held seminars. But the group concluded that young people were the key to change. They would start a private university teaching natural law and free-market economics. They founded Francisco Marroquin in 1971 and began classes a year later with 40 students in a rented house. Enrollment is now at 2,700, and the university offers 18 degree programs, including journalism, architecture and medicine, on a beautiful, modern campus. All students speak English. Entrance requirements are stiff. So is tuition. At $8,000 a year for some programs (more than three times the annual gross national per capita income), it's the priciest university in Guatemala. University President Giancarlo Ibarguen said the sum was justified by the good job offers graduates receive. There are no sports teams and no affirmative action in hiring or admissions. Instructors can forget about tenure; there is none. Ditto for the protests and sit-ins that are common in public universities in Latin America. If Francisco Marroquin students are unhappy with the product they're getting, they're free to take their business elsewhere. "If you don't like Macy's, you go to Gimbels," Ayau said. Critics scoff at the so-called House of Freedom, as Francisco Marroquin likes to refer to itself. "What they sell is discipline . . . a uniformity of thought that easily translates into dogma so that students graduate from campus believing that they are unique possessors of truth," said Mario Roberto Morales, a respected Guatemalan writer and intellectual. "The truth is that the university exists to indoctrinate the children of the oligarchs." Andrea Gandara, a 24-year-old political science major, begs to differ. The daughter of middle-class parents, she said her instructors had been consistent in their criticism of both mercantilism and socialism.Gandara said she wanted to take what she has learned at Francisco Marroquin and communicate it to a wider audience, particularly the millions of low-income Guatemalans that she said elites had written off as ignorant and easily manipulated by socialist rhetoric. Her career goal: president of Guatemala. "People aren't dumb. They want to make more money. They want to have more opportunities," she said. "Here we criticize capitalism, but we don't even know what it is. . . . I want to be part of a movement to change their minds."
marla.dickerson@latimes.com
Times staff writer Alex Renderos contributed to this report.
For article on the LA Times website which includes photos, go here:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-guatemala6-2008jun06,0,5560223.story
Leftist Thinking Left Off the Syllabus
By Marla Dickerson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 6, 2008
Guatemala City: Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University.
For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court.Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is affixed to the school of business. Students celebrated the novel's 50th anniversary last year with an essay contest. The $200 cash prize reinforced the book's message that society should reward capitalist go-getters who create wealth and jobs, not punish them with taxes and regulations."The poor are not poor just because others are rich," said Manuel Francisco Ayau Cordon, a feisty octogenarian businessman, staunch anti-communist and founder of the school. "It's not a zero-sum game."Welcome to Guatemala's Libertarian U. Ayau opened the college in 1972, fed up with what he viewed as the "socialist" instruction being imparted at San Carlos University of Guatemala, the nation's largest institution of higher learning. He named the new school for a colonial-era priest who worked to liberate native Guatemalans from exploitation by Spanish overlords.Ayau believed universities should stay out of politics and "place themselves beyond the conflicts of their time." Easier said than done, considering that at the time, Guatemala was under military rule and in the midst of a civil war.A CIA-backed coup in 1954 had toppled the country's democratically elected president, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. His proposal to redistribute unoccupied land to peasants infuriated the nation's largest landowner, U.S.-based United Fruit Co., and stoked fears in Washington that Guatemala would become a Soviet satellite. Arbenz's ouster unleashed a bloody internal conflict that lasted nearly four decades.Whereas San Carlos University actively aided leftist guerrillas, Francisco Marroquin preached the sanctity of private property rights and the rule of law. The cheeky Ayau chose red as the school's official color "on the theory that it had been expropriated by the communists and we shouldn't cede them exclusivity." He wore a bulletproof vest under his academic gown at the first graduation ceremony.Tensions have mellowed since peace accords were signed in 1996. The same cannot be said of Ayau, whose nicknames include "the curmudgeon" and "Muso," short for the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. His once-ragtag school now ranks among the finest in Central America. And he continues to irritate diverse factions of this impoverished nation with his unshakable faith in free markets, personal liberty, small government and his insistence on "no privileges for anybody."Some leftists deride him as a lackey of the ruling classes, dishing up neo-liberal dogma to rich kids in a nation where a few powerful families still call most of the shots. Conservative elites chafe at his op-ed harangues about their cozy oligopolies and government protections.Ayau delights at the potshots coming his way from both ends of the political spectrum: They signal that someone is listening."Ideas are powerful," he crowed recently, showing a visitor an auditorium named for the late American free-market economist Milton Friedman. "We're making progress."Ayau's unflagging passions have turned Guatemala into an unlikely whistle-stop for all manner of capitalist luminaries.Friedman, the University of Chicago economist, was one of four Nobel laureates in economics to have lectured at Francisco Marroquin. The school has bestowed honorary doctorates on billionaire publisher Steve Forbes and T.J. Rogers, the swashbuckling chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor Corp.John Stossel, co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20," was honored this year on campus, as much for his ideology as his Emmy awards. An avowed libertarian, Stossel got a warm reception for his discourse against government regulation."We celebrate the message that this university teaches because economic freedom makes everybody's life better," Stossel said to rousing applause.No matter that Francisco Marroquin has made little headway in its own backyard.Today, more than half of Guatemala's population of 13 million lives in poverty. Namibia and Botswana rank higher than Guatemala on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. Guatemala is one of the most corrupt nations in the hemisphere, according to Transparency International, a nongovernmental organization. Land ownership is concentrated in few hands. Key industries such as sugar are controlled by powerful oligopolies that saddle poor consumers with high prices.
"They are insatiable," Ayau said.Still, Ayau points to a few small victories. Francisco Marroquin graduates were among the key architects of the 1996 deregulation of Guatemala's telecommunications industry. The country now boasts a competitive sector with some of the lowest rates in Latin America. About three-quarters of the population have mobile phones.
Francisco Marroquin "is like this little gem in the middle of this region," said Donald Boudreaux, a George Mason University economist who has lectured at the university. "It has a sterling reputation." How a small Guatemalan college became the darling of free-market circles has everything to do with Ayau, a charmingly abrasive dynamo who looks nowhere near his 82 years of age. Born into a middle-class family in Guatemala, Ayau spent much of his youth in the United States, where his mother moved for a time after his father's death. He attended Catholic high school in Belmont, Calif., then headed to the University of Toronto, where he studied chemical engineering. He dropped out after reading Rand's "Fountainhead." The novel's protagonist, Howard Roark, is expelled from architecture school after refusing to conform to its tired standards. "I realized when I read Rand . . . that I was starting out my life all wrong," Ayau said. He said he concluded that "I have to study something that I like, otherwise I'll never be any good." Ayau eventually earned a mechanical engineering degree at Louisiana State University and returned to Guatemala to work in the family's industrial gas firm. He joined a business council that lobbied the government on various issues. But favors granted to specific people and industries didn't make Guatemala grow any faster. Ayau wondered what role the state should play to ensure that everyone had a crack at prosperity. So he set out to teach himself economics. One of the first books on his list was "The Affluent Society," a 1958 bestseller by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. A longtime Democratic Party advisor, Galbraith believed that government spending on healthcare, education, infrastructure and anti-poverty programs was essential to society's well-being. Galbraith wrote that "wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding." Ayau wasn't persuaded. "I read the first two pages and I said, 'This guy is nuts!'" he recalled. He later picked up a pamphlet by Ludwig von Mises, a member of the so-called Austrian School of economics. Considered one of the fathers of modern libertarianism, Mises abhorred state intervention in the economy. He believed that open markets, individual choice, private property and the rule of law were the means to a prosperous society. Something clicked. Ayau read everything he could find by Mises, Friedrich Hayek and other Austrian School economists. He started a small discussion group among some Guatemalan friends and eventually traveled to New York to attend lectures at the Foundation for Economic Education, a free-market think tank. Through contacts there he met Mises and others whose works he'd been reading. At Ayau's urging, several traveled to Guatemala to speak to his tiny band of free marketeers, who by now were calling themselves the Center for Economic and Social Studies. The center published pamphlets, wrote newspaper op-ed pieces and held seminars. But the group concluded that young people were the key to change. They would start a private university teaching natural law and free-market economics. They founded Francisco Marroquin in 1971 and began classes a year later with 40 students in a rented house. Enrollment is now at 2,700, and the university offers 18 degree programs, including journalism, architecture and medicine, on a beautiful, modern campus. All students speak English. Entrance requirements are stiff. So is tuition. At $8,000 a year for some programs (more than three times the annual gross national per capita income), it's the priciest university in Guatemala. University President Giancarlo Ibarguen said the sum was justified by the good job offers graduates receive. There are no sports teams and no affirmative action in hiring or admissions. Instructors can forget about tenure; there is none. Ditto for the protests and sit-ins that are common in public universities in Latin America. If Francisco Marroquin students are unhappy with the product they're getting, they're free to take their business elsewhere. "If you don't like Macy's, you go to Gimbels," Ayau said. Critics scoff at the so-called House of Freedom, as Francisco Marroquin likes to refer to itself. "What they sell is discipline . . . a uniformity of thought that easily translates into dogma so that students graduate from campus believing that they are unique possessors of truth," said Mario Roberto Morales, a respected Guatemalan writer and intellectual. "The truth is that the university exists to indoctrinate the children of the oligarchs." Andrea Gandara, a 24-year-old political science major, begs to differ. The daughter of middle-class parents, she said her instructors had been consistent in their criticism of both mercantilism and socialism.Gandara said she wanted to take what she has learned at Francisco Marroquin and communicate it to a wider audience, particularly the millions of low-income Guatemalans that she said elites had written off as ignorant and easily manipulated by socialist rhetoric. Her career goal: president of Guatemala. "People aren't dumb. They want to make more money. They want to have more opportunities," she said. "Here we criticize capitalism, but we don't even know what it is. . . . I want to be part of a movement to change their minds."
marla.dickerson@latimes.com
Times staff writer Alex Renderos contributed to this report.
For article on the LA Times website which includes photos, go here:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-guatemala6-2008jun06,0,5560223.story
Monday, May 26, 2008
Honoring our Warriors
On this Memorial Day, I honor our warriors - those who volunteer themselves for the military of the United States of America.
I heard Obama and others speak today and the word that struck my ear was SACRIFICE. I hate that word. I consider it one of the REALLY HIDEOUS words of English. Politicians always talk about the sacrifice - what a man must endure and give up to be in the military. How disgusting - since it has nothing to do with why they are there and what they seek for themselves.
A man who honors his deepest values by fighting for his country is not a man who sacrifices. He loves more strongly and values more acutely than a lot of us. He is a man who chooses to be called by a profound value and puts his life on the line in its name.
Any man up to something must rank his values and choose the more important ones over the less important ones. And everything sought costs something. But this is the opposite of sacrifice. There are people sitting on their couches at this moment who ARE the sacrificers. They were called, knew they would love nothing more than to be a warrior and didn't do it - for any number of reasons. Choosing a lesser value over a greater value is to sacrifice.
Screw that. I honor our warriors like this:
Thank you, our warriors of this great country, for valuing our country and the values for which she was created. Thank you for protecting her and those values. Most of us are grateful beyond our ability to respond as they are our values too. And thank you, the parents and families of our warriors, living and fallen. To have produced a child or married a man or woman who values deeply and is willing to mean what he says is itself extraordinary. If your son, daughter, husband or wife has fallen in their quest, it is even more poignant. To be so alive in that oh-so-purposeful moment and stopped in his love and ours, stops everything mid-inhale.
So here we are. Words fail us, but we know. And because we know, we honor you.
I heard Obama and others speak today and the word that struck my ear was SACRIFICE. I hate that word. I consider it one of the REALLY HIDEOUS words of English. Politicians always talk about the sacrifice - what a man must endure and give up to be in the military. How disgusting - since it has nothing to do with why they are there and what they seek for themselves.
A man who honors his deepest values by fighting for his country is not a man who sacrifices. He loves more strongly and values more acutely than a lot of us. He is a man who chooses to be called by a profound value and puts his life on the line in its name.
Any man up to something must rank his values and choose the more important ones over the less important ones. And everything sought costs something. But this is the opposite of sacrifice. There are people sitting on their couches at this moment who ARE the sacrificers. They were called, knew they would love nothing more than to be a warrior and didn't do it - for any number of reasons. Choosing a lesser value over a greater value is to sacrifice.
Screw that. I honor our warriors like this:
Thank you, our warriors of this great country, for valuing our country and the values for which she was created. Thank you for protecting her and those values. Most of us are grateful beyond our ability to respond as they are our values too. And thank you, the parents and families of our warriors, living and fallen. To have produced a child or married a man or woman who values deeply and is willing to mean what he says is itself extraordinary. If your son, daughter, husband or wife has fallen in their quest, it is even more poignant. To be so alive in that oh-so-purposeful moment and stopped in his love and ours, stops everything mid-inhale.
So here we are. Words fail us, but we know. And because we know, we honor you.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Teenage Employment
On July 24th, 2007, the minimum wage increased from $5.15, where it had been since 1997, to $5.85. This year on July 24th, it increases again to $6.55. Next year on July 24th it will increase again to $7.25. Economists have long noticed that when the minimum wage rises, the marginal jobs are no longer offered. It is the teenagers that take the brunt of this change.
Two things of note. (1) The New York Times article below writes of teenagers having trouble finding a job. It speculates several reasons blaming it mostly on a declining economy in general. It NEVER mentions the issue of the rising minimum wage as the cause. There is something hugely missing in the New York Times business writer's economic education and experience that this is not in the article. (2) Because the government forces business to pay a mimimum wage, it says, "I know better than you are able to decide for yourself." There is ALWAYS a consequence to forcing someone, that isn't a child or a criminal, to do what you want rather than letting the person work it out and choose on his own. This is precisely how the US Government, at this crucial point when a young person is getting into the habit of working, causes poverty, waywardness resulting in crime and disdain for the law, resignation, resort to harmful substances, etc. The Government says, "Because we know what is best, we know that you are better off WITHOUT a job than with one." Then, it wants to fix that problem, so it forces something else - it forces "Peter to pay for Paul while Paul sits on his ass," or it starts a job-finding program or a make work program or something. You can be sure of two things: (1) The economy and business will be to blame and (2) the government will have to regulate people's choices MORE in order to fix the problem. The spotlight never, ever falls on the REAL CULPRIT - actually, the REAL CRIMINAL - the initiator of force by the government itself in the peaceful activites of men!!!! That is the essence of a criminal. The government is no exception.
This century is the century for the freedom of our most abused civil right - the right to one's life. We demand by right the complete and total right to our own life which includes the right to make our own economic decisions rather than pick up the crumbs after you, the government, have told us how it has to go. In other words (repeat this out loud in front of a mirror until it is natural for you): "I demand the freedom which is rightfully mine to use my mind and my property, including my body, in the planning and carrying out of my economic life."
You heard it here. SCB
Business
Toughest Summer Job This Year Is Finding One
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: May 25, 2008
TULSA, Okla. — School is out, and Aaron Stallings, his junior year of high school behind him, wanders the air-conditioned cocoon of the Woodland Hills Mall in search of a job.
Mr. Stallings, 18, says he has been looking for three months, burning gasoline to get to the mall, then filling out applications at stores selling skateboard T-shirts, beach sandals and baseball caps. He likes the idea of working amid the goods he covets. But so far, no offers.
“I’m going to go to Iraq and get a job,” he says acidly. “I hear they’ve got cheap gas.” He grins. “I’m just playing. But I’ve been all over, and nobody’s hiring. They just say, ‘We’ll call you tomorrow.’ And no one ever calls back.”
As the forces of economic downturn ripple widely across the United States, the job market of 2008 is shaping up as the weakest in more than half a century for teenagers looking for summer work, according to labor economists, government data and companies that hire young people.
This deterioration is jeopardizing what many experts consider a crucial beginning stage of working life, one that gives young people experience and confidence along with pocket money.
Little more than one-third of the 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States are likely to be employed this summer, the smallest share since the government began tracking teenage work in 1948, according to a research paper published by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. That is a sharp drop from the 45 percent level of teenage employment reached in 2000.
The rates among minority young people have been particularly low, with only 21 percent of African-Americans and 31 percent of Hispanics from the ages of 16 to 19 employed last summer, according to the Labor Department.
Retailers, a major source of summer jobs, are grappling with a loss of American spending power, causing some to pull back in hiring. Restaurants, also big employers of teenagers, are adding jobs at a slower pace than in previous summers, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association in Washington.
As older people stay in the work force longer and as experienced workers lose jobs at factories and offices, settling for lower-paying work in restaurants and retail, some teenagers are being squeezed out.
“When you go into a recession, kids always get hit the hardest,” said Andrew Sum, an economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies who led the study on the summer job market. “Kids always go to the back of the hiring queue. Now, they find themselves with a lot of other people in line ahead of them.”
At the lower end of the market, adult Mexican immigrants, in particular, pose competition for jobs traditionally filled by younger Americans, like those at fast food chains.
“Spanish-speaking team members in our stores have increased the age a little bit,” said Andy Lorenzen, senior manager for human resources at Chick-fil-A, a national chain of chicken restaurants based in Atlanta, where 70 percent of the work force is 14 to 19 years old. Adult workers “have lost jobs in this economic downturn and begun to seek employment in our stores.”
Employment among American teenagers has been sliding continuously for the last decade and, with a few ups and downs, dropping steadily since the late 1970s, when nearly half of all 16- to 19-year-olds had summer jobs.
Economists debate the cause of this precipitous decline in teenage employment. Many contend that the drop is largely a favorable trend, reflecting a rising percentage of teenagers completing high school and going on to college, with some enrolling in summer academic programs, leaving less time for work.
“The key factor is the attraction of attending college and enjoying the increasing wage premium that accompanies this,” said John H. Pencavel, a labor economist at Stanford University.
In wealthier households, many have come to see summer work as a waste of time that could be spent gaining an edge in the competition for entry to elite colleges.
“Kids from higher-income households just aren’t going into the labor market,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “They’re looking for things to put on résumés, and working at Dairy Queen or Wal-Mart just isn’t going to help you get into Wake Forest or Stanford. And they just don’t need the cash.”
But others, like Professor Sum, contend that plenty of teenagers want to work but face increasing difficulties landing jobs. From early 2001 to the middle of 2007, the number of Americans employed outside the military grew more than 8.3 million, according to the Labor Department, yet employment among teenagers fell more than 1.2 million.
In the New York metropolitan area, an index by Economy.com shows a modest increase in the sorts of jobs typically filled by teenagers in the summer.
Still, with the economy gripped by what many experts believe is a recession, opportunities are growing leaner for teenagers in most of the country.
Even in parts of the country where there are jobs, some teenagers are having trouble finding them.
Tulsa, a town on the banks of the Arkansas River that swelled into a city amid an oil boom early last century, seems at first an easy place to find work. This metropolitan area of 900,000 people never saw the increase in housing prices and subsequent collapse that leveled economies elsewhere. While energy prices are reaching records and the oil patch is buzzing with activity, Tulsa’s unemployment rate was a mere 3.3 percent in March, compared with the national rate of 5.1 percent that month. Skip to next paragraph
Here, the force of Hispanic immigration is being reversed: A bill aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants passed by the state legislature late last year has prompted thousands of them to leave town.
So along the broad suburban avenues in the southern part of town — ribbons of black pavement lined with ice cream shops, burger stands and barbecue joints — managers are having a hard time finding workers.
“Pretty much everybody is hiring,” said Andy Irick, director of operations for Sonic, a restaurant chain based in Oklahoma, complete with blaring music and servers on roller skates. “If you walk in and you’re clean cut and presentable, you’re going to get a job.”
While summer jobs may be abundant in some industries, opportunities tend to divide along traditional fault lines like race, the connections offered by one’s parents and — not least — whether one has a car in this sprawling city of scant public transportation.
More than 15 percent of the city’s population is African-American, according to the 2000 census. Black people are largely clustered in the older, northern part of town, on weather-beaten roads largely devoid of shopping and places to work. The suburban strip malls to the south are miles away.
At a state-financed program that helps lower-income young people find jobs, Arbor Education and Training, some have quit coming to the center because gas prices are too high, and some have lost jobs because they could not get to work, said the program’s director of operations, Jacky Noden.
Meanwhile, at a job skills class at Booker T. Washington High School, considered Tulsa’s most prestigious public campus, six graduating seniors, all bound for college and all possessing cars, already had jobs for the summer.
Greg Robinson, 18, cast his job as an instructor at a golf course as a perfect chance to network. “Golf is the sport of business.”
Shakhura Henderson, 18, saw her job as an assistant in an optometrist’s office as a beachhead in a growing area of the American economy. She and the other students stammered in veritable horror when asked if they would consider working in fast food.
“I don’t see myself saying, ‘Hey, sir, may I take your order,’ ” Ms. Henderson said. “I don’t see any growth in it.”
Claire Tolson, 17, a student at another selective school, Thomas A. Edison Preparatory, said she planned to spend the summer as a hostess at the Local Table, a restaurant specializing in produce from around the area, earning $8 an hour, plus tips.
Tall, blond and poised, and looking ahead to a career in engineering, Ms. Tolson has two friends working at the restaurant already. One of their parents knows the owner, she said.
“I don’t think it’s too hard to find a job,” she said.
But Ms. Tolson’s classmate, Wesley Childers, has no such connections, relying instead on newspaper classified advertisements for his job search. He wants a job so he can save money to buy a car next year, but his lack of a vehicle presents something of a Catch-22.
“Employers want you to have reliable transportation,” he said.
Mr. Childers wears a pressed blue suit and shiny black loafers to job interviews. He has applied to McDonald’s and to Target, the discount department store, among other places.
“I haven’t heard anything back,” he said. “There’s so many other kids, and there’s also so many other people who are unemployed. It’s getting frustrating.”
At Will Rogers High School in a heavily Hispanic part of town, a 15-year-old sophomore named José, who has lived here since he was 2 years old but lacks legal immigration papers, worried that he would not find a job. He would happily work in fast food, he said, but word is that more places are checking papers.
“It limits your choices,” he said. “A lot of people are afraid.”
Two things of note. (1) The New York Times article below writes of teenagers having trouble finding a job. It speculates several reasons blaming it mostly on a declining economy in general. It NEVER mentions the issue of the rising minimum wage as the cause. There is something hugely missing in the New York Times business writer's economic education and experience that this is not in the article. (2) Because the government forces business to pay a mimimum wage, it says, "I know better than you are able to decide for yourself." There is ALWAYS a consequence to forcing someone, that isn't a child or a criminal, to do what you want rather than letting the person work it out and choose on his own. This is precisely how the US Government, at this crucial point when a young person is getting into the habit of working, causes poverty, waywardness resulting in crime and disdain for the law, resignation, resort to harmful substances, etc. The Government says, "Because we know what is best, we know that you are better off WITHOUT a job than with one." Then, it wants to fix that problem, so it forces something else - it forces "Peter to pay for Paul while Paul sits on his ass," or it starts a job-finding program or a make work program or something. You can be sure of two things: (1) The economy and business will be to blame and (2) the government will have to regulate people's choices MORE in order to fix the problem. The spotlight never, ever falls on the REAL CULPRIT - actually, the REAL CRIMINAL - the initiator of force by the government itself in the peaceful activites of men!!!! That is the essence of a criminal. The government is no exception.
This century is the century for the freedom of our most abused civil right - the right to one's life. We demand by right the complete and total right to our own life which includes the right to make our own economic decisions rather than pick up the crumbs after you, the government, have told us how it has to go. In other words (repeat this out loud in front of a mirror until it is natural for you): "I demand the freedom which is rightfully mine to use my mind and my property, including my body, in the planning and carrying out of my economic life."
You heard it here. SCB
Business
Toughest Summer Job This Year Is Finding One
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: May 25, 2008
TULSA, Okla. — School is out, and Aaron Stallings, his junior year of high school behind him, wanders the air-conditioned cocoon of the Woodland Hills Mall in search of a job.
Mr. Stallings, 18, says he has been looking for three months, burning gasoline to get to the mall, then filling out applications at stores selling skateboard T-shirts, beach sandals and baseball caps. He likes the idea of working amid the goods he covets. But so far, no offers.
“I’m going to go to Iraq and get a job,” he says acidly. “I hear they’ve got cheap gas.” He grins. “I’m just playing. But I’ve been all over, and nobody’s hiring. They just say, ‘We’ll call you tomorrow.’ And no one ever calls back.”
As the forces of economic downturn ripple widely across the United States, the job market of 2008 is shaping up as the weakest in more than half a century for teenagers looking for summer work, according to labor economists, government data and companies that hire young people.
This deterioration is jeopardizing what many experts consider a crucial beginning stage of working life, one that gives young people experience and confidence along with pocket money.
Little more than one-third of the 16- to 19-year-olds in the United States are likely to be employed this summer, the smallest share since the government began tracking teenage work in 1948, according to a research paper published by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston. That is a sharp drop from the 45 percent level of teenage employment reached in 2000.
The rates among minority young people have been particularly low, with only 21 percent of African-Americans and 31 percent of Hispanics from the ages of 16 to 19 employed last summer, according to the Labor Department.
Retailers, a major source of summer jobs, are grappling with a loss of American spending power, causing some to pull back in hiring. Restaurants, also big employers of teenagers, are adding jobs at a slower pace than in previous summers, said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president for research at the National Restaurant Association in Washington.
As older people stay in the work force longer and as experienced workers lose jobs at factories and offices, settling for lower-paying work in restaurants and retail, some teenagers are being squeezed out.
“When you go into a recession, kids always get hit the hardest,” said Andrew Sum, an economist at the Center for Labor Market Studies who led the study on the summer job market. “Kids always go to the back of the hiring queue. Now, they find themselves with a lot of other people in line ahead of them.”
At the lower end of the market, adult Mexican immigrants, in particular, pose competition for jobs traditionally filled by younger Americans, like those at fast food chains.
“Spanish-speaking team members in our stores have increased the age a little bit,” said Andy Lorenzen, senior manager for human resources at Chick-fil-A, a national chain of chicken restaurants based in Atlanta, where 70 percent of the work force is 14 to 19 years old. Adult workers “have lost jobs in this economic downturn and begun to seek employment in our stores.”
Employment among American teenagers has been sliding continuously for the last decade and, with a few ups and downs, dropping steadily since the late 1970s, when nearly half of all 16- to 19-year-olds had summer jobs.
Economists debate the cause of this precipitous decline in teenage employment. Many contend that the drop is largely a favorable trend, reflecting a rising percentage of teenagers completing high school and going on to college, with some enrolling in summer academic programs, leaving less time for work.
“The key factor is the attraction of attending college and enjoying the increasing wage premium that accompanies this,” said John H. Pencavel, a labor economist at Stanford University.
In wealthier households, many have come to see summer work as a waste of time that could be spent gaining an edge in the competition for entry to elite colleges.
“Kids from higher-income households just aren’t going into the labor market,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “They’re looking for things to put on résumés, and working at Dairy Queen or Wal-Mart just isn’t going to help you get into Wake Forest or Stanford. And they just don’t need the cash.”
But others, like Professor Sum, contend that plenty of teenagers want to work but face increasing difficulties landing jobs. From early 2001 to the middle of 2007, the number of Americans employed outside the military grew more than 8.3 million, according to the Labor Department, yet employment among teenagers fell more than 1.2 million.
In the New York metropolitan area, an index by Economy.com shows a modest increase in the sorts of jobs typically filled by teenagers in the summer.
Still, with the economy gripped by what many experts believe is a recession, opportunities are growing leaner for teenagers in most of the country.
Even in parts of the country where there are jobs, some teenagers are having trouble finding them.
Tulsa, a town on the banks of the Arkansas River that swelled into a city amid an oil boom early last century, seems at first an easy place to find work. This metropolitan area of 900,000 people never saw the increase in housing prices and subsequent collapse that leveled economies elsewhere. While energy prices are reaching records and the oil patch is buzzing with activity, Tulsa’s unemployment rate was a mere 3.3 percent in March, compared with the national rate of 5.1 percent that month. Skip to next paragraph
Here, the force of Hispanic immigration is being reversed: A bill aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants passed by the state legislature late last year has prompted thousands of them to leave town.
So along the broad suburban avenues in the southern part of town — ribbons of black pavement lined with ice cream shops, burger stands and barbecue joints — managers are having a hard time finding workers.
“Pretty much everybody is hiring,” said Andy Irick, director of operations for Sonic, a restaurant chain based in Oklahoma, complete with blaring music and servers on roller skates. “If you walk in and you’re clean cut and presentable, you’re going to get a job.”
While summer jobs may be abundant in some industries, opportunities tend to divide along traditional fault lines like race, the connections offered by one’s parents and — not least — whether one has a car in this sprawling city of scant public transportation.
More than 15 percent of the city’s population is African-American, according to the 2000 census. Black people are largely clustered in the older, northern part of town, on weather-beaten roads largely devoid of shopping and places to work. The suburban strip malls to the south are miles away.
At a state-financed program that helps lower-income young people find jobs, Arbor Education and Training, some have quit coming to the center because gas prices are too high, and some have lost jobs because they could not get to work, said the program’s director of operations, Jacky Noden.
Meanwhile, at a job skills class at Booker T. Washington High School, considered Tulsa’s most prestigious public campus, six graduating seniors, all bound for college and all possessing cars, already had jobs for the summer.
Greg Robinson, 18, cast his job as an instructor at a golf course as a perfect chance to network. “Golf is the sport of business.”
Shakhura Henderson, 18, saw her job as an assistant in an optometrist’s office as a beachhead in a growing area of the American economy. She and the other students stammered in veritable horror when asked if they would consider working in fast food.
“I don’t see myself saying, ‘Hey, sir, may I take your order,’ ” Ms. Henderson said. “I don’t see any growth in it.”
Claire Tolson, 17, a student at another selective school, Thomas A. Edison Preparatory, said she planned to spend the summer as a hostess at the Local Table, a restaurant specializing in produce from around the area, earning $8 an hour, plus tips.
Tall, blond and poised, and looking ahead to a career in engineering, Ms. Tolson has two friends working at the restaurant already. One of their parents knows the owner, she said.
“I don’t think it’s too hard to find a job,” she said.
But Ms. Tolson’s classmate, Wesley Childers, has no such connections, relying instead on newspaper classified advertisements for his job search. He wants a job so he can save money to buy a car next year, but his lack of a vehicle presents something of a Catch-22.
“Employers want you to have reliable transportation,” he said.
Mr. Childers wears a pressed blue suit and shiny black loafers to job interviews. He has applied to McDonald’s and to Target, the discount department store, among other places.
“I haven’t heard anything back,” he said. “There’s so many other kids, and there’s also so many other people who are unemployed. It’s getting frustrating.”
At Will Rogers High School in a heavily Hispanic part of town, a 15-year-old sophomore named José, who has lived here since he was 2 years old but lacks legal immigration papers, worried that he would not find a job. He would happily work in fast food, he said, but word is that more places are checking papers.
“It limits your choices,” he said. “A lot of people are afraid.”
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Whoops! The Mask of Liberalism Slipped
Maxine Waters is now in the motivational territory of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Robert Mugabe, Pol Pot, Mao and any other petty dictator that I've missed, including your wife, husband, boss or children if they slap you around. They love forcing people. They love having the invincible upper hand. They live for it and become it as the sin qua non of dominance. Thank God she didn't have a gun right there, although I would have loved seeing a more graphic demonstration of this principle lest anyone missed it.
Isn't Maxine a sweet thing? That, my friend, is the face of evil. Take a good look. Whenever there is no shortage of the natural resource, oil, and the oilmen want nothing more than to produce it for the use of people; and you have a government which has regulated its production out of existence and then blames it on the oilman, you are seeing an injustice so huge that it is incomprehensible by its sheer defiance of reality. Maxine has found the ultimate way of not being responsible and thereby loses access to her humanity, namely her hold on reality. That is known by another name - monster.
In that moment, she was the killer in "No Country for Old Men" except she was not as cold and ruthless. NOT YET. She was, though, the Caesar who loved seeing the gladiators eaten by the lion. The source of this is one thing - hatred for the aspirations, achievements and knowledge of reality of individual human beings. (I would bet she likes the collective words: people, American people, humanity, the public.) And don't fool yourself by thinking that she was that only in that moment. For Maxine, this is a basic premise. (Ditto Hillary: "I am going to take those profits", i.e., I am going to enslave you to my will, justified, of course, by the "public good.")
Atlas Shrugged dramatizes what the government counts on as their policies remove creativity and motivation (all individual) from American life: "You will think of something, Mr. Rearden." In other words, we won't let you create but, of course, we know you will. The Government didn't have the last word in the novel and since Rand showed the world the lie their pretensions rely on, they don't have it now. In the novel, the businessmen withdrew their creativity, their productivity and their spreading their ability to know reality. They shrugged.
If you notice, the CEO of Shell said, in so many words, "The Government's policies are harming the American people." This is a great thing to say because it neutralizes the politicians where they live. They justify their anti-man use of force by the "good they are doing for the American people."
Although the businessman made progress here, it is not the final moral mountain to climb to secure our and his freedom. The justification that what you do is "good for people or contributes to people" is not the point. Why? Because human life does not fundamentally depend on this fact. What it does depend on is your knowledge of reality and your ability to produce the values on which your life depends. People find other people of enormous value for all kinds of reasons, so that is not the issue nor the problem. Essentially man's mind must be free from the forced interference of other men. Why? Because an individual's mind does not work by force. No one can force a man to think. Force, when it comes to creation of values is impotent which is why Maxine Waters would be immensely laughable if it weren't for the fact that a seriously increasing number of people agree with her.
"I ORDER you to create a symphony! If you don't, I will fine you or throw you in prison. If you make me look bad before the public, I may kill you!" This sounds frightfully like that institution we gave up once - at the end of the Civil War.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Amazing Grace
This morning I was watching the movie, Amazing Grace. About a third of the way through, the protagonist sings Amazing Grace. I have heard this song many times, but until this morning, it never had personal meaning for me.
During the past almost 3 years now, I have been struggling with the issue of identity - who I am and who I say I am. This struggle has not been easy as I've been bitter and I've been, although knowing that I love people, not existentially present to love for them. I knew I was bound in some way that I held my values/beliefs and in so doing, I was granted no grace. The things that I have tried before petered out. I was set on the rough seas of the soul, pissed that they were rough - refusing to accept the anger, the hatred and the upset.
At some point I got that I was bitter. I had gotten hints of that but had refused to accept it. Bitterness has always meant not just a little failure, but a huge failure in the striving for something really important. Could it be that my whole life was in the toilet? The thought was not entertainable!
I gratuitously read a review of a story that used the phrase, "when his life didn't work out as he had hoped, he was plunged into bitterness." Ah-hah! That phrase in black and white made the bitterness real. Within a couple hours, I came to accept myself as I was - bitter.
Although the waves on the sea were still big, they were no longer angry. I looked at them more closely and pondered how they worked. I began to postulate cause and effect. "When I accepted this, these results followed." This was the form of my working hypothesis. In my conversations, I would speak these statements: "Because of x, y." I would get agreement from people or not. Either way, I questioned more. I tried out many hypotheses and usually made people or belief systems or courses, accompanied by lots of anger, the cause of my plight. I did it around people who held various aspects of these causes valuable so they would react and give me something to work with.
The linchpin of this whole enterprise, the two premises I was unwilling to give up, was that there is no split between mind and body and that my mind is capable of grasping and making sense of reality. If you do something that is not consistent with your nature as a human being, then you will pay a price in both your consciousness and your body for attempting to manifest values which negate each other. Thus I began to look carefully at the values I pursued and whether they were consistent with each other and whether they corresponded to reality. I began to think that as long as I was so angry, I was placing the primary cause out there when it might be an inappropriate, some-way-inconsistent value that I was pursuing.
One value that I had pursued for many years in the form of courses at Landmark Education was coming to know myself, and consequently people in general. How do I and they really operate? Because this was an important value, I began to realize that there was some part of myself that I was giving up on because I wanted people in my life. I had come to the place where I was taking courses for no reason other than having people in my life to play and grow with. It advanced to the point where I neglected my career to play with these people. What happened and how did this work? That was a mystery worth solving.
Needless to say, the anger and battling with myself and others was the way to learn how this contradiction worked. So, I accepted that I was that way. So what if my friends left me. And, they did. They couldn't handle what my personality and behavior had become. Ironically, the more I accepted myself in this manner, the more fun I began to have. A new energy was coming into my life.
About a month ago I listened to a recorded lecture delivered by Ayn Rand in the mid-60s at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston. She told the story of a brilliant and talented person devoid of motivation to do anything. He was "dead in the water," so to speak. Then I got an email story about a little boy who lost his mom when he was in the first grade. He was so distraught that he no longer cared about school, where he had previously excelled. Finally several years later when a teacher discovered what had happened and granted him some space, he told her of his loss. With that came acceptance and he again excelled.
In both cases, we are talking about soul problems. I have friends who think soul is a bad word to use because it implies the idea that whatever it is extends beyond this life and this body. What baloney. Like every other profound emotion and mental state, be it sacred, worship or whatever, it has been taken over by religion to the point that people do not realize that these are all deeply held human values and emotional responses which exist in response to the real world and prior to a particular story on which to hang them such as a religious worldview.
So, let me state here what I mean. The soul is one's life force, it is the energy that you have to live your life. It is comprised of your ideals and values and whether you triumphed or failed, specifically who you were in the matter of your life and whether you went for it or sold out. If you have stood for your self and acted consistent with your values and reality, then that will register in your soul as energy and an opening to the future. If, on the other hand, you sold out and gave up on an important value, that will register as a loss of energy and a shutting down of your future. The soul is the record book within your consciousness of what you have done to yourself - consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly. We all are men of self-made soul because one's soul is unique and only available to the individual. In matters of the soul we are not anti-social, but un-social. The soul is a completely private domain.
Hearing these stories of souls off the track, I realized that the soul is individual, unique and private. It is shown to the world through our being, but no one controls it except us. Man's rational faculty, his reason, is his means of survival. It is through his reason that he gains knowledge, makes choices and experiences happiness. When we take hold of the controls of our souls ourselves - the levers, dials and steering wheel - and apply the universal laws which apply to us because we are a particular kind of entity, namely human, then we build our soul and reap the rewards. If we do not, we get what we get and put up with the results, which can never be happy and will result in a rough and angry sea, if not resignation and death.
In my wanting to have human beings in my life as an end in itself rather than have particular human beings who are an expression of my values and a response to my values, I never discovered that my soul was individual and mine. I left the piloting of my soul to wherever that value took me...I became its slave and lost my power.
Epihany! The seas calmed but ironically there was a new fierce means of power. How is this possible? The resurgence of the life force energy propelled my ship and it no longer depended on the wind.
Now, this is real grace - Amazing Grace!!!
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see."
During the past almost 3 years now, I have been struggling with the issue of identity - who I am and who I say I am. This struggle has not been easy as I've been bitter and I've been, although knowing that I love people, not existentially present to love for them. I knew I was bound in some way that I held my values/beliefs and in so doing, I was granted no grace. The things that I have tried before petered out. I was set on the rough seas of the soul, pissed that they were rough - refusing to accept the anger, the hatred and the upset.
At some point I got that I was bitter. I had gotten hints of that but had refused to accept it. Bitterness has always meant not just a little failure, but a huge failure in the striving for something really important. Could it be that my whole life was in the toilet? The thought was not entertainable!
I gratuitously read a review of a story that used the phrase, "when his life didn't work out as he had hoped, he was plunged into bitterness." Ah-hah! That phrase in black and white made the bitterness real. Within a couple hours, I came to accept myself as I was - bitter.
Although the waves on the sea were still big, they were no longer angry. I looked at them more closely and pondered how they worked. I began to postulate cause and effect. "When I accepted this, these results followed." This was the form of my working hypothesis. In my conversations, I would speak these statements: "Because of x, y." I would get agreement from people or not. Either way, I questioned more. I tried out many hypotheses and usually made people or belief systems or courses, accompanied by lots of anger, the cause of my plight. I did it around people who held various aspects of these causes valuable so they would react and give me something to work with.
The linchpin of this whole enterprise, the two premises I was unwilling to give up, was that there is no split between mind and body and that my mind is capable of grasping and making sense of reality. If you do something that is not consistent with your nature as a human being, then you will pay a price in both your consciousness and your body for attempting to manifest values which negate each other. Thus I began to look carefully at the values I pursued and whether they were consistent with each other and whether they corresponded to reality. I began to think that as long as I was so angry, I was placing the primary cause out there when it might be an inappropriate, some-way-inconsistent value that I was pursuing.
One value that I had pursued for many years in the form of courses at Landmark Education was coming to know myself, and consequently people in general. How do I and they really operate? Because this was an important value, I began to realize that there was some part of myself that I was giving up on because I wanted people in my life. I had come to the place where I was taking courses for no reason other than having people in my life to play and grow with. It advanced to the point where I neglected my career to play with these people. What happened and how did this work? That was a mystery worth solving.
Needless to say, the anger and battling with myself and others was the way to learn how this contradiction worked. So, I accepted that I was that way. So what if my friends left me. And, they did. They couldn't handle what my personality and behavior had become. Ironically, the more I accepted myself in this manner, the more fun I began to have. A new energy was coming into my life.
About a month ago I listened to a recorded lecture delivered by Ayn Rand in the mid-60s at the Ford Hall Forum in Boston. She told the story of a brilliant and talented person devoid of motivation to do anything. He was "dead in the water," so to speak. Then I got an email story about a little boy who lost his mom when he was in the first grade. He was so distraught that he no longer cared about school, where he had previously excelled. Finally several years later when a teacher discovered what had happened and granted him some space, he told her of his loss. With that came acceptance and he again excelled.
In both cases, we are talking about soul problems. I have friends who think soul is a bad word to use because it implies the idea that whatever it is extends beyond this life and this body. What baloney. Like every other profound emotion and mental state, be it sacred, worship or whatever, it has been taken over by religion to the point that people do not realize that these are all deeply held human values and emotional responses which exist in response to the real world and prior to a particular story on which to hang them such as a religious worldview.
So, let me state here what I mean. The soul is one's life force, it is the energy that you have to live your life. It is comprised of your ideals and values and whether you triumphed or failed, specifically who you were in the matter of your life and whether you went for it or sold out. If you have stood for your self and acted consistent with your values and reality, then that will register in your soul as energy and an opening to the future. If, on the other hand, you sold out and gave up on an important value, that will register as a loss of energy and a shutting down of your future. The soul is the record book within your consciousness of what you have done to yourself - consciously or unconsciously, knowingly or unknowingly. We all are men of self-made soul because one's soul is unique and only available to the individual. In matters of the soul we are not anti-social, but un-social. The soul is a completely private domain.
Hearing these stories of souls off the track, I realized that the soul is individual, unique and private. It is shown to the world through our being, but no one controls it except us. Man's rational faculty, his reason, is his means of survival. It is through his reason that he gains knowledge, makes choices and experiences happiness. When we take hold of the controls of our souls ourselves - the levers, dials and steering wheel - and apply the universal laws which apply to us because we are a particular kind of entity, namely human, then we build our soul and reap the rewards. If we do not, we get what we get and put up with the results, which can never be happy and will result in a rough and angry sea, if not resignation and death.
In my wanting to have human beings in my life as an end in itself rather than have particular human beings who are an expression of my values and a response to my values, I never discovered that my soul was individual and mine. I left the piloting of my soul to wherever that value took me...I became its slave and lost my power.
Epihany! The seas calmed but ironically there was a new fierce means of power. How is this possible? The resurgence of the life force energy propelled my ship and it no longer depended on the wind.
Now, this is real grace - Amazing Grace!!!
"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me....
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now, I see."
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