Dismantling America

Opinion Editorial by Thomas Sowell

Oct 27, 2009

As the American Constitution and free-market economy crumbles under the over-reach of the government, is there any way to put this country back together again upon the values it once stood for?

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers — that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government — people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year — each bill more than a thousand pages long — too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up.

Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question — and the biggest question for this generation.

Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. He has published dozens of books on economics, education, race, and other topics. His most recent book is The Housing Boom and Bust, from April 2009.

No Noes

This seen at www.lucianne.com.

The nation is starting to take on the project of having Barack grow up. Will he do it? Can he do it? Stay tuned.

The Insanity of Government Health Care

For all those that think that public health care, i.e., Government Health Care, is good, this man, Representative Rogers of Michigan, is very clear as to what the issues are and what’s more important, the insanity of the plan and the callous, arrogant, disgusting attitude of the government toward the people of the United States.

I suppose there are some sweet little old ladies out there advocating government health care who we think are soooo innocent that they would never be so evil and anti-human as to advocate a system of institutionalized evil - which is what government health care is. It’s time to call them, all of them, no matter what form they come in, to account. They are not your friend, not my friend, not humanity’s friend.

There should be no Government Health Care. None. Freedom which provides innovation in every aspect of that field is the answer if we want health care. The last anyone should want is the dead, corrupt, entangled, unaccountable, violently costly, political hand of government. I can't think of anything worse than that. No man should have to live with that institution directing his life. It is simply anti-human and sucks the life out of HIS life.

Apparently during this time in our history, a large number of people want the "mommy" state. Whatever that means, one thing is for sure. The state will not fulfill on that requirement. It has none of the characteristics of a mommy unless your view of a mommy is a "Mommy Dearest."

There is a place for government, but a proper government is nothing like the government we have today. For one thing - and for a teaser - it must not be able to arbitrarily levy taxes. There has to be another, voluntary way for the state to raise money. It must, as all of us must, be created to depend on enrollment and registration, not force of arms to obtain money from the people who it is designed to protect.

Great minds ought to be creating how, and the system required for a voluntary payment to government to work. Then it should be tried in small, and then increasingly larger, jurisdictions until it gets perfected as a working method for the government to raise money. We are never going to be politically free until we get rid of the arbitrary force of Caesar. I'm not persuaded by the Bible's command to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's." I might be persuaded just to keep myself from having to go to prison, but I definitely am not persuaded as a design principle for a moral, principled and just government.

The Fear-based Government

Never have I seen such a fear-based Administration and government. The US Government has truly become public enemy #1. Give a man motivated by fear a gun and trouble is likely to ensue. The fact that the government is the final authority and possesses and uses guns as its ultimate and distinguishing characteristic, means that we are in big trouble.

Anyone who understands freedom and the abundance it provides for all those who participate must realize that we are on a path which is 180 degrees from that course. We have gotten a man and wife in the White House which have a score to settle. That score is based in hatred and hatred is based on fear. Instead of seeing an expansion of freedom such that we all can continue to learn what life requires and which nourishes us, we are seeing rules and regulations on everything. Instead of men welcoming disagreement in order to learn more about how life works and what is true, this Administration is refusing to talk to or about anyone who disagrees with them. This, I assert, implies massive fear.

It's funny to watch Obama pretend that Fox News, e.g., is not even a news organization. This guy is massively out of touch with reality. Further he is counting on the dumbbells of this country to give him the approval he needs. No one who is interested in life and living a good life can afford to live this way. Obama thinks he can. Hmmm. Is he that stupid? I don't think he is innately stupid. I do think, rather, that fear will make one stupid. Fear of people asking questions and perhaps doubting that he is really The One must be terrifying.

Clearly we are in a battle: Freedom vs. Tyranny. Barack Obama is the first snake oil salesman of the 21st century. He has the pleasant manner and the "sweet" family that keep a lot of people lulled into an "everything will be ok" state of mind.

Believe me, it is not OK and it will not turn out well. And at the rate that things are happening, it will not take long for the consequences of this horrendous, people-fearing, Democratically controlled government to become apparent.

The wealthy people may be able to get out of the country and not be controlled by this tyranny. But for the middle class and the underclass, this promises to be one huge concentration camp, border to border.

Sounds horrendous, doesn't it? If you show me one fact, one marker, that the direction of this government is any way other than toward tyranny, I would like to see it or hear it. I assert that the people who are still believing that this Administration is acting in their interests are asleep - deeply asleep. They are deeply invested in not rocking any boats. They hate conflict and argumentation, even disgruntlement. Their wallpaper patterns consist of babies, kittens and puppies. Or, as Rand once said, their lives "are about baby blankets and hams." They would rather ride blithely in a boat headed for the falls than jump overboard and, even though difficult, work to get to a solid bank.

The solid bank IS one's knowledge of how the world works. Not how one hopes it will work. Not how one prays it will turn out. I mean how the world works. It means being grounded in how human being operates, what political freedom is and why it is important that the political system be consistent with the possibility of human being, not the control of human being. (If you think that control of human being is the way of the future, you need to get your ass on a psychologist's couch to see if you can discover why you think that.) One must have, one way or the other, the philosophical/moral basis for the requirements for a society such that a man can freely live in it. And during these trying times, that knowledge cannot be implicit. It must be conscious and explicit. Otherwise, you don't really know and know that you. Without that, one is destined to drift, float and go over the falls. Without that there can be no access to the will to speak out, to resist and finally take the action which can, if successful, save yours and your loved ones' lives.

Do you think this is a dire message? Your god-damned right this is a dire message. Do you think I'm typing this up because I want to be ostracized as a pariah? No, I'm not. I am saying this because I'm a canary in the coal mine. I understand these things. The value of freedom and the morality that works for freedom has been something which was awakened by my father when I was a kid. I could see that he cared about such things and got disgusted when people didn't act according to the principles which honored people in their rights and as a person. He could get morally outraged at injustice. I liked that. I admired that. I became that.

I know what freedom is. I am very aware of it vs. when it is not present or being threatened to be taken away. I worked for 40 years to increase the distinctions I have around this topic. I am not one who is going to blithely slip into a life where those distinctions are missing. It's not me.

If you lived on a desert island, you would be free because there would be no one else on the island. A free country, a political system whose value and organization is for freedom, is living as free in society as one is free on a desert island. In a free society, people recognize and honor the right of every person to live his life. Nothing impinges upon him other than the principle by which he chooses to live which is, to honor the right of every man, woman and child which includes him, to be free of everyone else. He can do anything he wants except initiate force against another person or his property. A free man can interact with any other man so long as he can obtain the agreement of that person for such action. A lot of this is in the unsaid that governs society, but really it's quite simple.

But now, people are primarily scared. The big motivator is fear. The blacks have been buying the victim conversation for decades and that is a fear-based conversation. Many women and gays have been generating a fear-based conversation too. With all education controlled by the government, we are now realizing that our children have no knowledge of core values. Consequently anytime their actions are threatened or something isn't magically on the table before them, they have no interior to which to repair. All they have is fear - and then the sob stories.

So we have many millions of people who are hanging onto Obama as some kind of hope. Hope for what? Their good feeling won't be interrupted? Crumbs and chump change? What exactly? That their race will have some power and won't be a barrier for them? What is it? I don't see that hope.

We know that government health care will produce a poverty of health services and care. If that comes to pass, right now we are on the mountain top insofar as the kinds of health care that an average person can obtain. The wealth of health care that we now have will be going the way of the vinyl record. Fear shrinks life. Love expands it. Tyranny and fear go together. Freedom and love go together. Tyranny and poverty go together. Freedom and wealth go together.

American freedom and wealth is about to end. It has been easy for a middle class person to live well in the United States. Eighteen months ago, I was commenting on this very fact. That is ending and it is soon going to be hard. A year from now, that will be apparent to more people although I have to admit that I am experiencing it now.

Architecture, especially so for my small business, is one of the first things to be affected by the larger economic picture. I can tell you with certainty that nothing is happening. One thing that is happening is that people who have wanted to build are still wanting to build. As this drags out, they look for the slightest clue that it would be good to move forward. So if there is any easing, I expect it to be a boom, at least for a short period of time. It could be that in 2 to 3 months I may be working as much as I can physically work.

With the kinds of things going on with the government now, I will have to have everything be put in a form that can have some power in the dry period that will inevitably follow. Damn it, I wanted a flat screen TV. That, however, may not be the thing to be buying. I don't want to be one of those dunderheads that go with the flow and wake up one day shocked within an inch of my life. I know that experience. Not good. This clearly is going to take some thought.

We are in and heading for the eye of a fear-based hurricane. Do what you can to stop it. I think stopping the government from instituting government health care, a bureaucrat who is designated to sit between your mind and your body, would put an enormous crimp in the Democrats' push for total power. I think Government Health Care means that the government, not you, owns your life. It means that you do not possess the right to your life for the simple reason that you will be unable to act in your own interest when it comes to your body. You will get the chump change. The choices that would have been possible under freedom won't be. Simple as that. Only the government's interest will matter in that world.

The Cap and Trade bill definitely needs to be defeated. That will tax you unto death. Thousands of dollars in higher prices caused by the government's tax on energy will change your life. Man's role in the climate is not understood. Frankly, I don't think it amounts to much in the face of the enormous forces of a much larger system in which we and our planet lives. Read Heaven and Earth by Ian Plimer for a scenario that will place the earth in a much larger context than the global "warmist," "climate changers" have. I think Al Gore is an idiot. He's a person whose purpose is to accumulate wealth via political means.

The five primary arguments I have against the global "warmist" positions are these: 1) The science is not there. Al Gore and the desperate global warmists are not careful about the facts and they are only interested in pushing people to a conclusion that will get them the control they want. I saw An Inconvenient Truth and I was appalled at how disrespectful it was to a thinking person. It was really not about the earth at all. It was about getting the audience to like Al Gore. (Now isn't that an interesting motivation for a politician? Oh my, I should be surprised. Sounds like someone else I know.)

2) Environmentalists lie - boldly and outrageously. They lie about polar bears, for one thing. They also lie about a lot of other things. Many of these lies have been documented. They are not about the Environment. They are about religion. This is not the first time in history that the earth and nature has become the touchstone of a religion. People live on the earth and need the earth as a resource to maintain their lives. But, their lives are not to be sacrificed for the earth or nature. That would turn the whole way things work upside down. But this is the way an Environmentalist thinks. He would rather save a 2" fish than provide food for people. Something wrong here. When I see him be the first to lay down his life for a fish, he will have some credibility. Until then? No.

Another very interesting fact is that private property owners take care of the environment much better than government ever has or will. One of the reasons is that government, as it now operates, is set up on a double standard. Everything you cannot do, they can. I've read articles about tree farms and such and the private farms are far better than the government owned lands. People generally love their property and they do not go around with the intent to harm it. Also, property is an investment and it works to maintain its value. On the other hand, the government could care less. It is oriented toward power and political spoils, not real life and real property. (Of course if you organize a march on Washington with a million or more people, you might get their attention to do something. Not necessarily though.) The great devastation of land is in the public lands. Since no one owns it, the thing to do is get as much as one can while he has the access. Or to pass a law such that it cannot respond to the natural laws that govern it. There is no future that one is worried about. The future for someone with access to public lands is far more dependent on one's ass-kissing ability than one's nature-caring ability.

3) Resources never go out of existence. They are always in a process of transformation of their form. Today's trash is a potential resource tomorrow. (Actually it is a resource right now, but until we have worked out how to use it, it is in a latent form.) E = m times c squared. Energy and mass are intimately related. One transforms into the other. As we are better able to control this process, we will be able to make these transformations ourselves. There is no need to be "spiritually" worried that we are going to run out of resources. Not possible.

I think that eventually all the manufacturing may be located on other planets and asteroids. Earth, where we live, will be a country club.

4) Pollution is not something that is necessarily damaging. In a free society, pollution becomes a problem if it damages someone's property - their body or their farm, if you get my point. No one gets to dump their weekly trash on my side of the fence, the property line. If I think that factory X is polluting my property, all I have to do is show that to be true. I do that by discovering the facts that show that. Until one has discovered those facts, there is no evidence that Factory X is polluting my property. (In today's world, people try everything but the facts to get people to stop doing something. The tools are sob stories, social pressure and unearned guilt. That's the tools we now use. Nasty tools. They don't work and we don't learn anything about how things work except how to better use those tools which makes our social world an increasingly nasty place to live. Not good.)

5) The free market responds to change the fastest of any human invention ever. It is constantly changing and the entrepreneur is always on the lookout for how better to meet the needs and wants of potential consumers. If the climate changes, the last thing we need are rigid laws decided by a bunch of politicians sitting in Washington or State Capitols trying to figure out how to change the laws so they and their backers can make a buck. This is corrupt. The free market, if free, will handle the changes we are always dealing with and seeking to provide for and it will do it magnificently and quickly. That is inherent in its nature. Nothing to fear. It is imperative to separate economy and state.

There are many areas to fight the current government. The control of speech is one area. Net neutrality is an attempt to place the internet under government control rendering it unable to respond to what people want. Obama's czars have various plans for controlling talk radio, disagreeable cable channels, etc., etc. All of this is very bad for us because it makes it much harder for us to get information and adjust our view of the world as we need to do for our survival.

Do what you can to prepare. The very best thing you can do is school yourself as to why fear doesn't work and you should give it up. I'm 69 years old and I would give up Medicare in a nanosecond for a free market in health care. I guarantee you I would be far more likely to get the health care I need if the market is free. Government control of health care will, if it comes about, strangle health care. If government saw to it that freedom increased, there would be nurses in drug stores and grocery stores taking care of most of the basic questions we have about health care. Health care would be abundant. Instead, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and company trot out some sob story (what I call sore picking) which they think is sufficient reason to put the noose around the nation's neck. What a Carnival of Arrogant Asses we have in Washington.

Why I Don't Like Obama

He's a sore picker.

Both he and Michelle are sore pickers.

Sore pickers have a negative, nasty view of life and they advertise it in their way of being, the way they behave and the things they say. When you see them, unless you need their words as affirmation for your own worldview, you want to get away from them. From a robust standard of life, they are poison. Everything thing they touch gets diseased, withers and dies. When they arrive on the scene, they tell you the world stinks and then they proceed to make it stink more. That is the nature of a sore picker.

The primary orientation of a sore picker to life is that of a victim. Michelle illustrated this recently when she went to Copenhagen to hawk Chicago to host the Olympics. She told the world how big a sacrifice the whole affair was and well, the beneficiary of this huge sacrifice should be the children. She wore the finest clothing and took her own jet from Washington to Copenhagen. Never mind, life sucked.

The time I remember Obama's sore picking being so incongruous and inappropriate was during the campaign when he spoke at a fund-raiser in Hollywood. He was among some very wealthy people, people like, if not, Barbara Streisand, Michael Moore - those kind of people. Obama took the microphone and began talking about all the people who have no home, have no future. He talked about broken legs, sclerotic livers, broken families, hunger and such. He never talked about how well he and the guests had done to earn their money, the money he sought to transfer from their pocket to his. He never put them in touch with all the reasons they would feel generous and want to give. Instead, he brought out his bag of sores and showed them to everyone like they were the main attraction. He used guilt as a motivator not excellence. This is an essential distinction of the sore picker. Anyone in the room with a shred of self-esteem would have ordered a double shot, pure alcohol - no water, no ice.

With a sore picker at the helm of state, America is doomed. A sore picker cannot see a beautiful sunrise, a promising talent or a good idea. It's not their orientation. Further, objective success is not their goal. Their goal is to pick at a sore until it becomes inflamed and won't heal. It always has to be available to show the world as their reason for who they are and what they do.

Blaming others is a primary strategy for anything that needs to be a problem and catapulted to emergency status. Blame Bush, blame Limbaugh, blame Wall Street, blame Insurance Companies, blame Big Pharma, blame Banks, blame Fox, blame Beck, blame Rich People, blame Greed, blame Selfishness, blame Torture, blame anything that can be used to have us react from emotion. Point the finger at others and despicable behavior. Why? Because we must be victims at all costs. That finger can never, NEVER be pointed at oneself. What we are seeing is very juvenile, responsibility-shirking behavior sitting in the chair of the most powerful position on the planet.

When Obama goes out of the country he always takes the mic and apologizes for America. Translation: Get the sores out of the bag and parade them before the world. He doesn't put them in context, he doesn't do anything but leave the world and us with our sores on parade. Nice guy, Obama. (Can you imagine how much you would hate your dad or mom if every time they met a stranger they told them about all your faults? And then apologized to them when they didn't even owe them an apology? Jeez!)

I remember during the campaign when I was researching Barack Obama, coming across his success in getting a law passed in Illinois that prevented policemen from going into black neighborhoods and stopping kids to find out what was going on. It was an anti-profiling law. Apparently the police patrolling their neighborhood was a sore and some people wanted it stopped. So, they stopped it.

Guess what happened? Crime went up and the neighborhood ended up worse off. In fact a few weeks ago - right when Michelle, Barack and Oprah went to Copenhagen, we saw a video of thugs beating a recent high school graduate to death with a railroad tie. This happened in a neighborhood in Barack's former district where crime is on the rise. He applied his talents and got police stopped from doing their work.

For your information, police do not go into neighborhoods just to harass people. They go into neighborhoods where there is crime in order to make known their presence in order that the potential criminals see that it is not likely to go well if they do their crime. The fact that the neighborhood is black, latino, Asian or white is not the point. Only Barack Obama would focus on a non-essential and pick it into a sore. This is the kind of man he is.

When Rahm Emanuel says that a crisis cannot go to waste, what he is saying is "Hey, we got a sore here. Look, it's already inflamed. People are in pain. Let's use this sore to get the money, the control, the influence we want." Pick, pick, pick.

When Michelle told us how she didn't like America until her husband was running for office and extending his sore-picker vision for America, it seemed incongruous. Here was a woman who was reared in south Chicago, got into a top-flight university, Princeton, and was succeeding according to what we would normally call high standards. From college she went back to Chicago and worked for a well-known law firm. When Barrack started running for office, she got better jobs and higher salaries. Still, she was a victim. She still carries this same being and is now America's First Lady. "C'mon, Michelle, give it up." She is a walking contradiction and living proof that a sore picker is never happy, can never really win, can never really succeed and be satisfied. Sore pickers are only happy when they are ensconsed and comfortable in their misery and suffering. A sore picker's soul is nothing more than an inflamed sore with no prospect of ever being healed.

(I read the stories of White House galas - parties - which happen often. For a sore picker, what must these parties be like? They cannot be joyous. I guess they are momentary escapes - rather like the escapes that heroine users seek. A life built on pain and suffering can only have momentary escapes from pain and suffering.)

Examples of the mentality of this Administration are everywhere. They happen every day, practically every moment of every day. Barack, Michelle, Rahm, Gibbs, Axelrod, Jarrett, Dunn, the Czars,and even the non-White House Democrats such as Pelosi and Reid are all promulgating, propagating this world view. I want to throw up.

The apotheosis of a sore picker is Mother Teresa. I blogged about her yesterday. She worshiped poverty, sickness, disease and dying so much that she dedicated her life to living in the midst of such sores. Her monuments are her institutions for the dying destitute of Calcutta. She loved to not do anything to prevent suffering because she thought that suffering was what made heaven so delicious. Millions of dollars piled up in her coffers, but she didn't use them to provide air conditioning for some physical comfort for the uncomfortable or drugs to ease the pain of the terminally ill. She was a miserable failure of a human being who wrote and told her Vatican counselors that her 50 years of bereftness was hard to bear. Her prescription for herself and for all those to whom she ministered was not to find ways to cure the disease or ease the pain and make life better, but to forgive. Find someone - yourself, your parents, your boss, even God himself, someone - to forgive. That is the way to be at peace and heal the soul. She did that for a lifetime and died of soul pain - bereftness.

(I want to say that I think it is appropriate for people who see a need to care for the indigent and sick at the end of their lives and are called to minister at this often deeply intimate part of life to do so. But, the reason for it cannot be death, sickness and suffering as some kind of passage to the hereafter . Rather it is because it is part of life, the end of life. Life is better for the dying souls as well as the rest of us to know that it is possible to take care of the end of one's life in a way that is reverent of life. I think that all of this kind of thing should be done by private means and never by government force. I don't see much reverence for life if the government comes with a gun to take people's money to provide for the indigent and the dying or health care for the sick, for that matter.)

It is no mistake that Anita Dunn pointed out that her favorite philosophers are Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa. Mao loved pain and death so much that he liked to watch people as he ordered them filleted before him.* Mother Teresa loved pain and death so much that she dedicated her life housing the permanently pained and dying, extolling their suffering as their access to the hereafter and her access to people's pocketbooks and proof that her life was worthwhile.

This orientation to life is sick - profoundly sick.

Life is a process of maintaining life - for as long as one is willing to do that. Sores are bumps in the road of living. They are not the focus for the living. Living and being able to continue living is the focus for the living. Yes, sores have to be dealt with, but if one gets oriented to them such that the sores themselves become one's reason for living and the way one gets attention in the world, that is evidence that one's orientation is off. For an American President and his First Lady to deck themselves out in sores is about as foul a display as could be had.

And that is what we have running our country. Anyone who has the victim mentality is not going to see another possibility and be transformed so long as Obama and company, the leader in this worldview, is of this mentality. A victim mentality always is at the effect of something or someone. It focuses on that and builds a life around it. Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the black caucus, religious ministers of all races parade pain and suffering as an attraction. They live off this and propagate it. This is a big trap for anyone who has tendencies in this direction and for this nation.

This is not to say that Pollyanna positivism is the good. It isn't. It's just as inauthentic and ineffective as is the sore picker orientation. What is needed is an objective orientation to reality, a respect for facts and ideas which produce real results. The last thing we need is a war against reality which is what we now have going on.

Freedom provides abundance and peace. Government control provides scarcity and lots of fighting. We have a President and his administration that hate freedom and love government control. They want to nudge us, overthrow us, order us, rob us - you name it - all in service of their sores and any sores that they can get the public to pick up on.

Notice that they love collectivism. Collectivism is another escape. "The solution to your pain," they say, "is to see yourself as a piece of the group and forget your pitiful little self. Volunteer. Participate in something - anything. Serve, serve, serve. A life of service is the answer. Become selfless, just like Mother Teresa. Forget yourself, you selfish little ant of a man." That is the Obama and Michelle prescription.

For America to get itself on the right track, we have to give up sore picking, leave it behind. It's no orientation to life if you want to live, produce and seek happiness. It's now time for America to turn 180 degrees, face life and do what it takes to have a successful and happy future.

*Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.

Letter to Glenn Beck

In your stories on Anita Dunn and her citing Mao Tse-Tung and Mother Teresa as her favorite philosophers, you have said Chairman Mao is bad but not Mother Teresa. I agree that Mao, a mass murderer, is bad, but I would like to challenge your sheltering of Mother Teresa. She is the apotheosis of the selfless person, a person who toiled day in and day out to destroy the essence of life – valuing. If you notice, the entire socialist idea requires the selfless person – the person who has no worth as an individual and only as a cog in the wheel of the collective.

Yesterday (Monday, October 19) on the show, you mocked the idea of service – volunteerism – work without pay. But Mother Teresa was devoted to such service. She is exactly the kind of person that the Obamas want to populate this country.

If America is having trouble getting its feet on the ground, it is this moral idea, that we should be our brothers’ keeper and give what we earn to our neighbor, that is the source of the problem. This "Christian" tenet is providing the moral octane for Obama’s message. Until it is clarified that every individual has a right to his life and owns every second of it, and that it in no way, not an inch, not a minute, belongs to the government nor Barack nor Michelle nor anyone, this issue is not going to get settled. No one has the right to expect that anyone would want to, let alone ought to help his neighbor. It's true that most people are generous and do help their neighbors and those they value when they can. But that is their choice. One is not required to be selfless in the matter. Unless each of us is able to stand for our right to decided for ourselves about this matter, we are not going to be able to access the moral fire to fight this socialist juggernaut.


(By the way, read Christopher Hitchens' book The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice to get a bead on Mother Teresa. She cashed in on the unearned guilt that the Catholic Church disseminated in its teachings. People gave her millions of dollars. But, she did not use it to ameliorate the suffering of the dying destitute, her ministry. When they were in pain near the end of their lives or were suffering from unbearable Bengali heat, she did nothing. No air conditioning. No pain relief. Why? "Suffering", she said, "is the access to everlasting life." All she would advocate is forgiveness. Forgiveness was her answer for everything. After her death it was learned that she sought psychological counseling within the Catholic Church for 50 years because all she could experience was a terrible bereftness. Her life is such an anathema of what a successful happy life is about that she should be given no consideration except as a phenomenon of irrationality carried to the extreme.)

For me, associating with other people in any way is my choice. To be forced, cajoled or driven by an unearned guilt (my fault if I accept the unearned guilt) to associate with someone abrogates the basis on which it could ever be declared a good thing. If one cannot choose a particular course, then it cannot be deemed good or bad. The moral assessment of good or bad applies only if one has a choice.

Rather than seeing the current Administration as concerned for the poor and those less fortunate, I see them as sore-pickers. Practically ever speech starts with warts, lost futures, broken legs and every form of human malady. (See the relationship to Mother Teresa yet?) These people thrive on sores and build their whole lives on supposedly helping the victims of such circumstances. The truth is they do little and whatever they do do is because of the strong. Individual freedom has done more to raise the standard of living for all the poor in the world than any other thing. And Obama is out to punish that. So which direction do you think the world is going?

People have not yet seen how evil the Obama Administration really is. Although cloaked in a largely unquestioned conventional goodness, I see it as everything but. Holding to the standard of political freedom and individual rights, it is not difficult to see how his every action augurs for the collectivization of society and the doing away with the concept of the individual and his life as an end in itself. To the extent his policies are carried out, we are all going to pay in terms of increasing hardship. A sore-picker sends up the red flag for me every time.

Have We Ever Seen Such A War Against Reality?

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

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

But this is not the only thing that is insane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Need a Return to Principled Government

(This piece is by Amit Ghate and appeared at Pajamas Media here on September 15, 2009.)

It’s widely recognized that our government is in dire shape. Our annual deficits are in the trillions of dollars. Unfunded entitlement programs run many times that. Lobbyists and earmarking rule Washington. Special interests, including public-sector unions, environmental groups, the AARP, and countless others, vie against one another for exorbitant privileges — all meted out at taxpayers’ expense.

Our most responsible mainstream news venues, like Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, often carry stories exposing the sobering facts. The analyses are penetrating, succinct, and eloquent. But the recommendations? Timid and trite. The best they can offer is to advise moderation: slow the growth of government here, cut back a program there, oppose a few details of the most onerous regulations, but basically resign oneself to the status quo.

It wasn’t always so. When faced with more difficult problems, our Founding Fathers imagined, created, and then fought for a radically new idea of government. Why were they able to do so, when our modern leaders and pundits can’t?

For a hint, contrast the approach of today’s politicians to that used in other fields. In physics and engineering, for instance, problems aren’t met by moderation, compromise, or resignation — they’re solved by reference to principles. Confronted with a new challenge, the first question engineers ask themselves is: “How do Newton’s laws of motion apply?” Similarly, biologists and free-market economists look respectively to the principles of evolution and of supply and demand to guide their thinking.

Yet an adherence to principles is what’s so conspicuously absent from today’s politics. Conversely, the Founders were paragons of principled action. Hence their historical success and our current failure.

The Founders’ deep conviction in their principles was borne of the process by which they arrived at them. Just as physicists and biologists derive their guiding principles from observation and theory, so did the Founders. They began with an exhaustive study of every major society in history. They looked at what worked and what didn’t, how men actually fared under numerous political systems. And their standard was the outcome of ordinary citizens — not kings or popes — because to them each individual counted. They also studied the philosophical and political theories of John Locke and others. Based on these works they came to regard each man as a moral end in himself who must exercise his reason to survive.

The lessons of history and philosophy proved that, to be successful, man must be left free to think, choose, and act for himself. The Founders captured this conclusion in a revolutionary new political principle: the protection of individual rights. In their formulation they were as careful as scientists. They correctly defined rights as protecting freedom of action, not guaranteeing success, results, or goods.

Moreover they understood rights to be universal, i.e., nothing can be a right for one person which entails the violation of another’s. (Though they accomplished so much else, tragically the Founders didn’t choose to abolish slavery. This shameful and glaring self-contradiction almost tore the country apart in the decades that followed.)

Armed with the principle of individual rights, the Founders proposed radically new solutions to their problems. Indeed, against all odds, they threw off the shackles of the world’s superpower and established a constitutional republic essentially from scratch. The explicit, overarching purpose of that government? “To secure the rights of each individual.” For much of its existence the nation worked to perfect this idea, abolishing the travesty of slavery, and eventually extending rights to all.

If there were ever any doubt that a consistent protection of individual rights is the proper principle to guide politics, it was laid to rest by America’s dynamic and unprecedented success. We all know of her unheralded prosperity and technological advances. But there’s perhaps an even more eloquent testimonial to the morality and practicality of her founding principle. Tens of millions of men, women, and children from around the world endured enormous hardships to make their way to her shores, solely for the prospect of living free — by right.

Unfortunately for them, and for us, the country slowly went off track. Both by a corruption of the principle of rights, and by a growing disregard for principles generally. Rights came to mean anything someone might need or wish for: we had “rights” to jobs, education, health care, etc. Similarly, principled action in politics gave way to seat-of-the-pants policy-making aimed at placating the loudest lobbyists.

As a result, rights were no longer inalienable. They were bartered and infringed at the government’s pleasure or the voters’ whims. The effect of each new pseudo “right” was to violate the legitimate rights of those forced to provide them. One restrictive regulation led to the next, and each government-extorted privilege created another class of special interests. Without a principle to clearly limit its role, the scope and size of government mushroomed. Hence our current situation.

Yet as bad as it is, we could quickly turn it around by injecting our fundamental principle back into the debate. For instance, we often hear the phrase “limited government” bandied about by the mainstream media. But without a standard to do the limiting, the phrase is empty. It’s time to point out that in its original and proper use, “limited government” meant limited to the protection of individual rights. Everything else was — and is — beyond the government’s scope.

Consider what this would mean to some of the problems mentioned earlier. Getting the government out of the economy, for instance, would obviate any lobbying, earmarking, or special interest warfare. Under a rights-respecting system, any individual or group who desires wealth would have to obtain it the old fashioned way — by earning it.

Similarly, most social programs would be (gradually) eliminated, since their existence violates the rights of those being forced to fund them. Instead, the minority of people in real need would have to rely on the abundant generosity of Americans to voluntarily assist them. (Historically this has worked well, from the 19^th century where doctors routinely gave unpaid care, through to current times where private aid for hurricane and Tsunami victims comes more copiously — and reliably — than from bureaucratic government programs.) Of course, none of this will be easy or painless — but that’s only because we’ve veered so far from our founding principle.

Contrary to today’s pundits, we don’t have to resign ourselves to more of the same in politics. With the principle of individual rights to guide us, bold solutions to our problems are possible. Indeed, with it as their guide, the Founders overcame enormous obstacles to create the greatest nation in history. We can too. All it takes is to recommit to the principle.

The REAL New World Coming

Today here at PJTV is a video pointing to what I think is the biggest breakthrough of a social/cultural/political type that has happened in 80 years.

Ever since the Roosevelt's New Deal, America has been instituting social programs. They are sold on the idea that they "help" people. The question and glaring contradiction that has been here all along is "If government programs to help people is a GOOD thing, then why must they be forced?" Why must government make them mandatory?

The screaming contradiction in this idea is that when a person is forced to do something for another or even himself, it can no longer be considered the good. A good is opposite a bad. One has choices and he chooses the good or the bad depending on the requirements of his life as he sees them. Whether it is good or bad for his life, or culturally good or bad for society in general, shows up in the consequences. He may think it through or just feel like doing it, but where the rubber meets the road is in the results.

When force is introduced into the picture, the person forced is prevented from being good or bad. Given that the alternatives are eliminated, he must do what he is required to do.

And, the force is there to prevent him from doing what he may have wanted and thought was good. Further, doing a forced "good" devoid of the life force invested in achieving a good is itself bad. The entire reason for doing it is stripped from the actor. Given this, the results of a forced program are dehumanizing, i.e., stripped of what it is to be human, and are ALWAYS bad.

We see this in Government Education. People know that it is compulsory. In a free society, if people went to school, the reason they were going would be paramount and a topic of conversation. That entire conversation of purpose which would naturally be there is eliminated by the compulsory nature of Government Education. And, this directly affects the results produced by Government Education.

Force eliminates everything of value. Value is something which one seeks to gain and/or keep. It can be anything - an internal state or a result in the world. When one takes an action to achieve it, he is in the process of producing that value for himself. And this is the life force - the spirit and the body in action. It is the essence of what life is, a process of self-generated action to maintain life.

The bombshell of the video I cite above is that it reveals the results of the trapped underclass. The videos exposing ACORN show that. Two young people had the idea to pose to an ACORN agency wanting to get a house which they were going to use for prostitution. They had a secret camera which they used to film the interaction.

The videos produced have revealed that the ACORN workers have no distinctions as to what is moral or immoral, legal or illegal. In fact they offer advice as to how to get around the government so they would not get caught. The prostitutes were to be girls brought in from El Salvador. They were underage and illegal immigrants. One of the ACORN reps said this was good because they would not have a social security number which could identify them. None of them raised even an eyebrow. The ACORN workers gave advice on how to avoid taxes and set up their business under the radar. In a video taken in a San Bernardino office, a worker felt so comfortable with the two posers that had come for advice that she admitted to shooting her husband in the head because she was scared of him.

These people have no moral compass whatsoever. How did this happen?

What is now being revealed is that America's social programs have trapped people in dependency where making good choices makes no difference. Being trapped in these programs slowly sucks the value of valuing itself out of these people. What's the use anyway? So an alternative universe grows up in these communities - a universe that has a completely different set of values than people oriented to reality and achieving values. These values are false values in an attempt to have some power in a shattered world. One could say that these programs cause entire communities besieged by mental illness.

And THIS is the big realization. THIS HAS BEEN CAUSED. It is not how healthy people operate. And, it is not how free people operate. And to cause this is "criminal" even though cloaked in government sanction. People care more for their pets than the "do-gooder advocates" care for the people that they vote to be taken care of.

The implication of this is that freedom, the freedom to make choices - even bad ones - is a requirement for being a healthy human being.

Although both political parties have been involved in these travesties - Bush expanding government control over our lives in many ways - the Democrats have been involved in this for years and right now have taken it on in spades. The Progressives openly advocate producing what they see as a good society. And now the latest program in the years-long chain of programs is Government Health Care which would have us all come to be like this underclass.

Without freedom to make choices, people become morally stunted. Because they cannot choose, they lose the capacity to make vital choices (choices which affect one's life force and desire for living) for their lives. The results are graphically before us.

This is what I think evil looks like. When the course of one's life makes no difference to oneself, the distinctions for living a vital human life are lost. We have certainly seen its face in these videos.

A Second Major Point

The other thing that is so apparent from the ACORN videos is how helpful and related the ACORN representatives are. I read one comment on an article about these videos that said "I know that woman (the one in the Maryland video) is evil but there is something about her that has me love her." This factor is the way she is relating.

This ACORN woman passes all of the relatability tests. She's there not to pronounce judgment, as none of the ACORN representatives shown in the videos did. And she is there to have things work. She has no moral compass, accepts the ACORN mission and gets busy. She never deals with the content of what the posers are saying to her. She simply amplifies what they are seeking. In the case of the one woman revealing her killing her husband, this was an effort to tell one on herself in order that the posers would feel free to talk and relate.

This is the major lure now used in our society. Oprah is good at it. President Obama is good at it which is one of the major reasons that he is attractive to so many people. I understand this and feel the pull of it too.

The other big bombshell of these videos is that relating apart from content is not the purpose nor the meat of communication and anyone who takes it to be is doomed to being a wayward itinerant through life. Further the person who understands how to use relating to cause results in other people finds himself in a position of using other people. This is about as quick an avenue to abuse as one can think of.

The area of knowledge that the study of relating falls under is ontology, the knowledge of being. It comes out of the existential school of philosophy and has been integrated into much of our society. It is the false idea that if you relate to people in the right way that nothing else matters, that you can get them to do anything. People can relay to you the most horrendous stories and a part of you wants to say, "Aren't you sweet."

This philosophy has given rise in this era to the idea that government control can be accomplished sugar-coated. And it is this belief which has given the Progressives new life. Where it runs aground is not in its way of relating but in the fact that the government seeks to control human life at all - that it somehow has the right to tell people how to live their lives.

This video is going to have far-reaching effects in both areas and portends a REAL new world coming, a world with more concern for what's real and more political freedom.

(This is related to the previous blog post, "The Affirmative Action President Test.")

The Affirmative Action President Test

Some months ago I said we cannot have an Affirmative Action President. We are now seeing whether Barack Obama is going to be held to the standards which have governed Affirmative Action or the standards of reality.

The idea of Affirmative Action came into existence following the death of Martin Luther King and the takeover of that movement by people who wanted to exert force. In order to prevent wholesale bloodshed, the guilt-ridden whites ceded what had been their authority in the institutions they controlled to hold people to the standards of their institutions, particularly educational institutions, and decided that blacks, because of their history as a downtrodden people, were not to be held to those standards. Instead of creating programs to bring students below the standards up to those standards, they simply lowered their standards. This, in so many words said, "Well what can you expect of them. We have to do something - anything - except ask them to step up." The blacks that accepted these lower standards took a bite of poisonous fruit.


Barack Obama and Michelle did take that bite and were allowed into these institutions. Barack and Michelle are the products of Affirmative Action.

In the ensuing years, many blacks were "given a chance" by this means and the result has now been produced - an Affirmative Action student is now President. The question is, can he be an Affirmative Action President? I said "no."

The reason I said so is because government is the institution that wields force. Because it has the power to transfer property and assets to other people, the issue is whether people are going to be stripped of their property and their freedom to run their own lives or not.

We are no longer talking about a standard in a voluntary institution. An Affirmative Action standard, which is actually the doing away with standards, if applied in government must be maintained by force. Because it is, the standard must fall or the people will have to give up their freedom and their right to control their own lives and the property they depend on for their lives. This is where the rubber meets the road. Will the standard of individual rights and people rising or falling based on their merit stand, or will it be overthrown for one where they do not have to produce the results, but merely need them? Will a standard be held to or will it be discarded as was done for Affirmative Action?

Thus far, Obama has been winning this battle as he has done much stripping of property and the right to control private property. He's nationalized the banks. He's nationalized GM and Chrysler and transferred assets to his supporters, the labor unions. He's now out to nationalize the medical industry.

With the rise of the Tea Party movement which amounts to the producers resisting this takeover, we see some individuals working overtime to reestablish the guilt that gave rise to Affirmative Action in the first place. We see Maureen Dowd accusing Wilson of racism. We get a clip of Reverend Wright saying that the racists don't like it that things are changing against them. Yesterday we saw Jimmy Carter imputing racism to Wilson. I saw a late night CNN segment on the rise of racism in this country - showing wackos who are racists and imputing that the Tea Party movement is like this.

We are seeing the Affirmative Action President Test in action right now.

How will this be resolved? I remember a statement of Ayn Rand's, "The most consistent wins." The principle is that the most consistent, whether metaphysically right or wrong, wins in the big contest of general public belief. Truth is not determined socially. It is determined by a statement's correspondence to reality. But, what the society as a whole acts on is a social product. If enough people believe a particular thing, right or wrong it is the direction society goes. Thus, the person who can stand for his statement most consistently will win the day.

As long as the grounds for the statements are not challenged and seen to be false, the most consistent will be able to build his constituency.

And in Obama's corner is a very big unchallenged ground indeed.

In this contest, the unchallenged ground is the idea that we should do what is best for society. We should always be mindful of the greater good, the public interest, the thing that is best for the most people, our poor neighbor who isn't doing so well. As Obama says, "We should be our brothers' keeper, our sisters' keeper." We should be "good" people by this standard. The bloody elephant's head in the corner of this belief is that someone must always be sacrificed. Those who do not agree must be created as devoid of human qualities and placed in society's basement. Society can only be merry, gay, joyful and happy if we can just get rid of the freaks, the radicals, the extremists, the party-poopers, the loners, the racists. And this, mind you, not because they did anything wrong but because they said something or went their own way. Jimmy Carter is telling us who the people are that need to be put in the basement.

We hear this ground from all corners of society. The preachers accentuate it weekly from their pulpits. Obama is bold and tells us that profit-seekers themselves are evil and the scourge of society. They are selfish and it is unfair that they have the money they earned through voluntary exchange. At first it was the big firms on Wall Street. Now it is the insurance companies who are the evil people who make money on the backs of the poor. The media pundits are railing against anyone who wants to act independently and so forth. All are telling us who to put into the basement. (And if Obama's railings are not bad enough, he's supported and arbitrarily allocated tax money and investor's money to what looks to be criminal organizations such as ACORN, the SEIU, and the always questionable big Labor Unions.)

Until people can stand for themselves as ends in themselves (individualism and individual rights) and yes, pursue their own self-interest as they see fit, the win will go to the likes of Barack Obama and the advocates on the Left and the Right who want to shove another person into the basement.

This is a tricky fight. We see that Obama is appealing to universal health care as a way to take care of all people. Of course there is a price as there is for everything we need to live. The price? The government will run it and make all the final decisions. We will exist by permit from the government as to whether we will live. (Already the papers are prepared as to how this can be done. You can go here for Ezekiel Emanuel's views.)

Health care, the proponents say, is a right. But it is an arbitrary "economic right", not a natural right. If you live on a desert island, you do not find health care naturally growing on a tree like we find oxygen in our air. It must be produced. Production is an economic activity. You have to take the actions for your health and provide the remedies for your care if sick, or you do not avail yourself of health care. If you need someone else's help in the matter, you have to go to them, honor them, and trade something for that help. The fallacy of the public health care advocates is that to produce the result they seek, they must force people to not live this way. They must force people to be uncivil and violate the natural rights of the person himself and the health care providers.

Health and health care is one of many values that people seek. It is not at any point in time, or for some ever, a value that they seek. To be forced to use one's productive energy to provide health care for other people is as great an injustice as one can find. But, until the people who advocate that all people can live on the surface with none in the basement can firmly stand for their right to work for and produce the values THEY seek and not those other people say they should seek, this battle will not be won.

And if it is not won, then we will have failed the test of the Affirmative Action President. If we fail, everything will be affirmative action in principle, which means, everything will be political. It will have nothing to do with living one's life and reaping the consequences of one's actions. The end of this line of argument is that all goods will be allocated by the government. The truth is, we as human beings will all be living in the basement.

PS: What I see happening now is that the charge of racism is losing its power. The charge is failing because there is no evidence on which to base the charge. It may be just a feeling or it may be something to use to slap the other party/side around. My answer to it is "Great. What else you got? Anything else you want to call me?"

Hopefully President Obama will be able to step up and stand for all people. He's not done it yet. He didn't do it in his famous Race Speech where he jettisoned Reverend Wright. Further he didn't do it in the Gates episode. These instances have led me to conclude so far that Obama is unable to be a leader in this matter.

However, whether he does step up or not may ultimately not make the difference. The circumstances are such that we as a country may get the lesson anyway. I suspect that is what will happen.

Perhaps all the protest against Obama's economic choices and his willingness to sacrifice the producers will show Obama that there is a political reality out here outside of his agenda. If he is the politician that people seem to think he is, he may get that his agenda is not working and will abandon it to redeem his Presidency. This will depend on whether Obama is an independent thinker. It would be great if he has such an epiphany, but again, it may not make the difference. If the country gets the lesson, then Obama will have fulfilled a purpose by showing America what works and what doesn't work. If so, we will have passed the Affirmative Action President Test.

So the great issues of this time are 1) Is America going to get beyond race? and 2) Is America going to reestablish the sanctity of the individual rather than sacrifice him to the almighty group? The first will be accomplished if the latter is accomplished. If the latter is not accomplished, then we will descend into a pressure group battleground with one category of groups being about race.

Dear Friend,

Dear Friend,

I saw your strong approval of Obama on Facebook. Why?

I know you think it is virtuous to worry and care about the poor and less fortunate. Fine. I don't have a problem with that - in and of itself if that's what you want to dedicate your life to.

But what is going on now is that Obama is advocating that motive as a his tool of persuasion to have the government provide all of these benefits. And the government is FORCE. It is not a voluntary organization. People do not get to not pay their taxes. If they try that, after some initial conversations and letters, an agent with a gun strapped to his waist will be out to see them.

If you translate this to everyday life, what it means is that if you want to provide for a needy neighbor and didn't have enough money to do that effectively, you would have to enroll people into giving to your cause. Another way would be to rob people of their possessions in order to get the money.

When we ask the government to pass a law to provide, we are asking for this robbery. People don't get to volunteer. They are forced.

So anyone advocating this program is really a person initiating force - not directly, but indirectly by calling on the government, voting for the government, to take this force-initiating action.

I assert this is fundamentally anti-life in every respect and I cannot believe that if you actually thought this through you would ever advocate it. This is why I am taking the time to write you.

There are lots of ways of providing. But doing it at the point of a gun is not a valid one. Just as a robber becomes a menace to peaceful society, you have to understand that by advocating the same action, you are becoming a menance to peaceful society. Do you get this? Think about it.

What this is - the name that no one will call it - is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics. It does damage to people and to society and good will among men and the facts show this to be true over and over and over. I can get those facts for you if you need them to verify that this is so.

You have advocated world peace. I think it is a great and noble goal. Using government to initiate force against its citizens is one of the primary and quickest ways to insure that there will never be peace - let alone world peace.

My best regards to my friend.

Principlex

Speaking to Wall Street

"I own you. I am kind."

Image by Associated Press

Screw Your Neighbor

Today there are hundreds of thousands of people marching in Washington. They are there protesting being screwed by the government.

Just who exactly is getting screwed?

This is the first time I've seen the producers of the nation marching on Washington. We are in a battle of the producers vs. the takers - the one's who produce a good or service vs. those who exist off the theft (by law, of course) of their production. The WHO that is getting screwed are the producers.

The Civil Right which scares both political parties to death and which has not been claimed ever since it was challenged and began its erosion over a hundred years ago is the right to economic freedom. Man to survive must use his mind to do a job, start a business or provide any good or service. This right has been so decimated by government control, regulation, taxation and general outlawing that the government has become the enemy of people everywhere.

I talk to idiots regarding their freedom all the time. They always focus on Republicans vs. Democrats, big businessmen vs. the little guy, whether they get a benefit while never thinking about how and who provides it, or some insignificant issue like whether someone accepts whether they have or advocate gay sex. All of this is focusing on a portion of the elephant and never seeing the whole thing. (Idiots are people with an opinion who are uneducated, ignorant, of the topic at hand and the premises upon which their opinion depends.)

The whole thing is freedom and it includes economic freedom.

Although our freedom has been sliding down the government drain for many, many years, the election of Obama has brought the issue to a head as he is wholesale redistributing your possessions into the hands of those who didn't earn them and who don't value them.

I'm hearing right now there are over a million people in Washington DC. (I'm getting direct reporting from WDC and the people who have seen many marches on Washington know that when the mall or Pennsylvania Avenue fills from point A to point B, that's a particular number of people. The news is reporting a conservative estimate - maybe a hundred thousand - but it is now looking to be many more than that.) (And this from Instapundit: STEPHEN GREEN IS continuously updating with reports from DC. He says ABC has estimated the crowd at 2 million. Here's another article on it. Others think a million is a closer number. DC Police estimate the number at 1.2 million.)

This picture was taken in the morning while the protest was still growing and before it peaked. Of course Obama and Pelosi, to name two, left town. Hmmm.



The essence of the new politics is SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR - take his possessions, his assets, his life. The poor and do-gooders who think that Obama's redistribution is justice - social justice - are wrong about that and will reap the whirlwind. They think they are going to get something that SHOULD be theirs for nothing by means of government fiat. They say it is fair, but it isn't fair by any rational standard. And because it isn't, they can only achieve this by force. In the background behind ever redistribution is the government and its gun. The poor's hand on the stick they hold will eventually be crowded off as the corrupt take all the spoils of this battle. (We see this in ACORN where poor blacks are hired for a pittance and required to produce X number of voter registrations or X number of housing loans without standards or training while their leaders are fabulously crooked and fabulously wealthy. What's worse is when the peons are caught, they are fired as if they are the problem. Used. That's all they are for - to be used. This is the face of corruption. More on this topic here.) When the initiators, the entrepreneurs, the risk takers who no longer have a reason to produce in order to enjoy their life have cut back or stopped, all of us pay the price.

And, those who lap this pablum and will pay dearly are those on the lower end of the economic scale. The standard of living rises or falls for all of society with the wealthy leading the way. Just as a computer cost $5,000 or more when they first became available, now they are less than $500. This is so as the rich saw their value and then others saw it. The demand caused producers to find ways to produce them for lower and lower costs - still providing the value and even adding more value as they learned they could and wanted to attract buyers to their products. Now even the poor have computers.

The government can provide none of this thing. When it comes to the economy, it is a parasite. It doesn't produce in the economic realm of life. It only sucks the life blood out of it. And it depends on people willing to SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR in order to do it. Every intervention, be it regulation, licenses, taxes, you name it, is an infringement on freedom and a drain on life force. Yes we need a government, but only to provide justice and protection, and that only if grounded in protecting individual rights - the right of every man to be an end in himself. The right for him to live his life, enjoy his liberty and pursue that which has, by his choice, his life worth living.

Down with SCREW YOUR NEIGHBOR politics! It's poison. It's deadly. It's divisive. There is nothing more obscene than watching Washington indulge its greed for power and money. And it does so because those who support it want that for themselves. They are willing to SCREW THEIR NEIGHBOR for it and this is causing a battle for life and the principles which govern it itself.

Freedom produces abundance. Statism - government control in any of its forms - leaves us with the opposite: diminished everything - including good will. How can you trust your neighbor who is sucking up to the government to take what you have earned?

The American ideal of freedom and the trader principle is what we want for ourselves and offer the world. This we must uphold and it is worth a fight.

The Truth Behind "United We Serve"

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 4, 2009--President Obama’s United We Serve campaign is in full swing, with the airing of public service announcements all across the country. What is the real meaning behind this initiative?

According to Alex Epstein, an analyst with the Ayn Rand Center, “This collectivist belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual is the foundation of the national-service ideology, which regards the individual as a servant to the nation. National service is a moral duty, its advocates claim, and the government should teach us that it is an integral part of American citizenship.

“Every totalitarian society in history has rested on the premise of man's alleged duty to the state. It was Adolf Hitler, for example, who preached that ‘the higher interests involved in the life of the whole must set the limits and lay down the duties of the interests of the individual.’ And the proponents of ‘duty’ to the state, although they claim to be patriots, are espousing a view that is fundamentally un-American.

“American individualism and freedom are incompatible with the noton that people are servants who owe their lives--or any portion of them--to the state.”

The Second American Revolution Has Begun

There is but one issue in this, the Second American Revolution. The Declaration of Independence declares the purpose for the independence - that each man has a right to his life, his liberty and his pursuit of happiness. Included in that is the right to his property. We own our own lives and the government does not own one second of them. Not One Second! And, I assert, this is the fight that is being clarified and will be had.

The only civil right, the one that people are more scared of than any other, the one that is regulated out of existence, is the freedom to use one's property as he sees fit. He reaps the benefits and the consequences accordingly. Economic freedom is the New Frontier for civil rights and the Second American Revolution is exactly this.

Tea Party Rules for Radicals

The Tea Parties are coming along - slowly getting to what is really at stake for our country. Thanks to Robert Villegas for his post - link below.

Freedom or slavery - that is the issue. This is the ultimate clash of political ideas. How do you want to live your life? Is it yours by right or does it belong to someone else? Do you want to live it in freedom, conducting it in the way you see fit or should your neighbors have a claim on your life. How much of a claim? As much as the government says they should have. All of the Obama programs are the pretext, the means, by which you will be chained to your neighbor.

If not here, where? If not now, when? America is freedom's final bastion. If Americans don't know the difference between freedom and slavery, who does? Which idea will win this titanic battle?

May freedom triumph. Is life worth living otherwise?

Tea Party Rules for Radicals

The Government Can

Political Correctness

How come we find ourselves caught in a web of politically correct speech? Everything seems to have been transformed into a rigid morality - a revival of puritanism worse than the traditional "religionistas". In the name of proper speaking we must endure sensitivity trainings on race, on sexual harassment, on gays, on unfamiliar religions. Decency and normal good will are not enough. Now we must all hold our mouths in the right way or be damned for our motives.

Bill Whittle of PJTV puts together a history or how political correctness has come about. I'd never heard this before and find it illuminating, opening many avenues for research and questions. You will find the video here.

Act Now or "One Day You Will Tell Your Grandchildren What America Was Like When Men Were Free"

Health Care No Longer About Health Care

We now see the little man behind the curtain. The hard Left Democrats fronted by President Obama are going for bald force. The debate is over. A war over who holds the ultimate power in the government and in your life has begun. Will it be the Progressives who consider it their destiny to shape society to their will or will it be the People who possess unalienable rights in a republic?

Any consciously freedom-loving person has felt the onslaught of anti-freedom actions by the government - not just this year but for many years past. It has been my lot to be a canary in this coal mine - screaming and squawking whenever I see freedom infringed. As in any serious inquiry, the causes and choices must go to the deepest level. Once you hear the melody of freedom, any note to the contrary puts out a sound off pitch. Sometimes the off pitch sounds become so numerous and loud that they get heard by many. That is what is now happening.

The infingements of freedom have become a constant bombardment. Maybe the real issue has been political power over others and how it is fostered and maintained all along - a thought I have never maintained. Now, however, it is obvious and I along with many people are getting it. The thought of being sick and some bureaucrat a thousand miles away having power over anyone's life is so revolting that now one wonders how ANYONE could abide that. The Health Care issue is a distraction to the real agenda. Anyone wanting the candy the seductionists hold in their hand is a fool. SCB


The Banality of Evil – The Health Care Debate Takes a Dangerous Turn
Posted on August 18, 2009 by Matt Holzmann Here

This evening the New York Times is reporting that the President and Congressional leaders plan to go it alone on their health care bill. Since this leadership includes Henry Waxman, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and we have seen their hysterical response to the growing concerns of many in the electorate with the various bills introduced so far, I am deeply concerned. Despite massive and growing resistance and incontrovertible declines in the popularity of their positions, they plan to take the gloves off and pass something, anything to be able to declare victory. For that is what this is all about now. Better, more widespread health care is not the issue any more. This is the most craven of partisan politics.

In 1962, Hannah Arendt, in writing about Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution, tried to understand the phenomenon of pure evil. Having been a good German who lived under Hitler until her life was threatened, she escaped the Holocaust. These were her people who did this thing. She was desperately trying to understand how the German people would participate in such horrors. “The Banality of Evil” was her description of the way in which ordinary people accepted the orders of their leaders and committed such crimes. The defense of “following orders” was disallowed by the International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg, who stated that following illegal orders was not a valid defense provided a moral choice was possible.

So what does this have to do with health care? Please allow me to relate a true story. Today seems to be my day for such if you have read my earlier blog.

I had a relative in England who died less than three months ago. I will relate her story. She was never in the best of health, but contracted tuberculosis a few years ago in her late 50’s. Since treatments are weighted in the National Health Service, it was determined that her care would not have a high priority. Her children were grown and did not need a mother’s care. TB treatment is expensive, and there is a limit in the UK of GBP 45,000 per patient per year excepting extraordinary cases. Someone somewhere sat down at a desk and factored in all of these variables. This treatment was delayed as are many kinds of treatment in the UK. Then 3 years ago, in a weakened state, she contracted cancer. Once again, the actuarial tables were consulted, and she received only limited care. At that point it was only a matter of time. She survived much longer than anyone would have expected. Other illnesses attacked her body. And then, one day, she finally passed on.

There were steps in this process. There were procedures and guidelines. And decisions made to limit treatment. In the United States, she would have had immediate and aggressive treatment for tuberculosis by government order. She probably would have stood a much better chance of surviving much longer with a reasonable quality of life.

The fact is that today, our government is highly constricted in its financial options. We have already indebted ourselves to a point where we can no longer finance that debt. Medicare, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which is controlled by the abovementioned leadership, will go bankrupt in 8 years. Social Security is predicted to do the same in the 2030’s. The CBO also has calculated that any of the bills now under consideration would cost as much as $1 trillion. So we have the two largest safety net programs yet undertaken by our government bankrupted by irresponsible government borrowing and poor management, and Congress own accountants predicting runaway costs. The president cited the Post Office as a comparison in speech to his undefined health care proposal in Portsmouth, NH last week. How can he and our leaders fail to see the analogies? How can they fail to see the potential for collapse and the terrible pain it might cause? This should be one of the most serious discussions of our time and there is no discussion.

The warning signs are all around us. We are faced with a health care system that needs reform. So many issues have been identified in the public debate that serious, measurable reform may now be possible. Ideas are coming from all sides. And yet we are faced with a pigheaded, partisan leadership that is basically preparing to tell the rest of us to go to hell and ram through another highly defective piece of legislation without scrutiny and without debate. The financial system bailouts and Stimulus Bill and Cap & Trade bill all point clearly towards where this will end up.

The Administration and its supporters have vilified the concerns of many about end of live panels, and yet this is a fact of life in the UK already. Somewhere far removed, bureaucrats make life and death decisions based on the numbers. With all of its faults, our current system values life much more highly. One of the chief theoreticians they seem to be listening to, Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel, the White House Chief of Staff’s brother, has openly discussed the “life value” of infants and the elderly, noting that a child is not really self aware until the age of two. This is a very, very dangerous discussion.

One of the fundamental virtues Americans have always held is the value of life. Whether it is in the care for sick infants or the billions spent on AIDS research or the heroic measures in the operating room on an inner city gunshot victim, or on the battlefield where our troops are indoctrinated with “no man left behind”, or our fundamental obligation under Medicare for the care of our elders, we have almost always managed to do the right thing. We make herculean efforts to do so. There is a preferential option for the weak in our culture that we must never lose that is based upon our humanity and our faith.

Or do we, like Eichmann, simply shirk responsibility by saying we were only following orders?