Getting Back to Economic Liberty

Given that we are in a phase of increased state control over the economy - which leads to the stagnation and poverty of a society all to prevent the risk of failure - it is time to get real as to what it is going to take to free ourselves up. The Commanding Heights is a 3-part documentary of such a process and I post it here to have a one-stop record of what it takes to "come clean" from the "heroine" of state protection.

Part I - The Battle of Ideas
 

Part 2 - The Agony of Reform 
 

Part 3 - The New Rules 
 

Marxism

Here is a lecture that is absolutely clear - chapter and verse - as to what Marxism is.



My claim that we are in the grip of some extremely evil people is born out by this lecture. Only if we understand what is happening right now will we be able to save ourselves. Otherwise, ours is the way of the hideous societies that have instituted Marxism in the past: Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Cuba, Cambodia and others motivated by a profound hatred of the nature of man.

Dark or Light - Choose

I’ve been reading Einstein’s biography by Walter Isaacson. I’m up to the 20s – after Germany lost WWI and before WWII. It was the era of the Weimar Republic.

During WWI, there were rumblings of anti-Semitism but it grew worse after Germany lost the war. People wanted scapegoats. Einstein, although not a full-fledged member of the Zionist movement, was a sympathizer and advocated Jews speaking out rather than trying to hide by assimilating into the German population and state. Einstein in particular was interested in the establishment of a university in Jerusalem which would allow Jewish students to pursue knowledge without being branded as some evil force tainting German science and German everything else.

In 1921, Einstein came to America to advocate for this university and raise money for it. Although there were droves of Jews who came out to support him, other Americans mobbed him to see a great scientist. His science got all the attention. He gave a number of lectures while he was here.

The unique and important thing to get from this period of history is the night and day comparison of a darkening Germany with a light and free America. The book makes that comparison available. Because I could relate to the light and free America of then, the stark darkness of now becomes apparent and chilling. Right now, important and powerful people in our culture are looking for scapegoats: Wall Street fat cats, Jews, White people, established success – all of these groups are blamed for our current problems.

Individual Germans holding themselves as victims - which makes no sense unless one is objectively a victim – was the root of Germany’s problems, and that condition is spreading, because people are taking it on themselves to spread it, like cancer in America. Obama has not been cultivating victims for nothing. Cultivating victims is the heart and soul of community organizing. He knows that only when a person considers himself a victim can he feel justified to abide and commit violence in one form or another. There have already been numerous instances of violence - mostly in the form of theft of property and liberty - and each is a test of the willingness of the American people to abide it. So far, there is no reason for him to be anything but confident.

The innocence of you - and if enough of us do it, America - is available at any time. All it requires is to flip the switch to the power position: I create value. That power rests with the individual. It is your choice.

Five Strategies for Altruism

Here is a link to Dr. Stephen Hicks' article on Elsworth Toohey's five strategies for altruism. Elsworth is the evil character of The Fountainhead fame.

The next step is to concretize how these play out, if they do, in one's own life. Altruism is the philosophy of self-sacrifice that must be defeated if human happiness is to thrive. Altruism leads to emptiness, the opposite of the happiness possible to a life full of value.

Racism - The Divisive Issue - Throwback to Apartheid

Barrack Obama wants to destroy the current world - not for a better one - but because he's mad that it got created this way.

Racism is one of the crowbars he's using to pry the world into the fire of social discord to provide the opportunity for social change. When the world is good and hot, provided he can direct the unrest, he will pound it into shape - his way. We know his vision is a one-world, non-capitalist, diminution of American material and intellectual wealth such that the United States is rendered powerless and unable to teach the world to sing*.

We are now seeing the Breitbart Vetting - a series of videos intended to make clear who Obama is and what another four years of him will mean for all of us. The first one shows Obama hugging Professor Derrick Bell, an avowed racist who gets his kicks from harassing white people.

In the video below, we start seeing the unpacking of the significance of Obama's hug and continued relationship with Professor Bell up through his death in 2010. The CNN commentators can only act like nothing of import exists and then talk in racial terms indicating that skin color is the primary concern for human beings. They have no facility with ideas - their truth and meaning. Ideas and the mind have to be inserted into the conversation by the liberty-oriented commentators. Automatically the CNN commentators assume the group is the primary concern of human life and their concern is whether someone is fitting into or offending the group. This collectivism justifies the worst of political systems - socialism and even totalitarianism. I love the way the Breitbart spokesman so clearly and evenly articulates the issue.



*The song American teaches the world to sing is that every individual in America possesses individual rights which leave him free to sing his song to the world. This song has only been sung in America and it is revered by every human being around the globe that desires only to be free to sing his song.

Andrew Breitbart

Moral Fire in Favor of Life

A Turning Point in Human History

In Western Civilization, what happened in the past few weeks is huge. You may not have realized this, but I think a dividing line in history happened. I assert, the dignity of man won and the political freedom of man is now ours to claim. (It may take at least a hundred years to play out.) Let me see if I can explain this.

Some people thought Obama met his match by challenging the Catholic church in relation to Obamacare. Not so. Obama scored a big win in the dominate/avoid domination battles of politics. That is, in one context he did score big. But in an even bigger context, he didn’t. In fact, he set the stage for the State-as-we-know-it's demise as well.

This article on the history of the politics of redistribution has come out. In the 30s, (80 years ago) the Catholic church made a deal with the devil thinking that government programs providing for the needy were in line with their teaching to help the poor and needy. They got on board with FDR’s programs that redistributed wealth because they interpreted those programs as fulfilling their teaching of charity. What they did in that moment was give up their role as moral leader, i.e., causing people to make choices according to the church’s version of the good person which their followers believed, for the gun which is the means to bypass choice.

The government using its gun to take your earnings to give to someone else is not charity. In fact it is the opposite of charity. Government force used in this way is criminality and diminishes human life in the name of supporting it. All Obama did was cash in on what happened 80 years ago by forcing the Church to bow before him as represented by the rules of the State. In essence, though, he is claiming victory for the State over the Church in the ages-old battle for dominance of one over the other. The Catholic church put its moral imprimatur on initiated force – the same force that a common criminal uses on people and for the same reason – to take their property. This welded the church, at least the American Catholic church, to the evil use of force and now it is going to suffer its fate – the end of its influence after about 2000 years of history. This will end its role as moral authority.

OK. That’s part of the story. But, it is not the whole story. The real story is that now it will be possible to see that the church and state are one in the same – initiated force. Obama in his action cleaved the church to its bosom as partners in crime. If a criminal on the corner holds you up and tells you to give your money to the beggar in the gutter, you would not for a second call that charity. Whatever façade the criminal hoped to hide behind would be shattered by his use of force on you. You would have no choice but to gird yourself for battle/self-protection as you would against any criminal - against any person who seeks to bypass your power to choose.

One of the images of this connection was offered by Rand in For the New Intellectual where she talks about the symbiotic relationship of the Witch Doctor and Attila the Hun – the spiritual leader and the man of force. She detailed how they are connected to control the ordinary man. The spiritual leader holds and teaches that man is bad and wrong from the start – original sin and the like – and this justifies the initiation of force by the state to control this “evil brute.” And because the spiritual leaders have told men they are evil, they fear all the other men who they think are also evil and demand the state protect them. Each needs the other.

But now we see that they both hold the gun and the violence of initiated force as the final authority. This is what has been revealed. So, the charade is over.

Now with both of them able to be seen using force in a criminal way (i.e., initiating it against an innocent man) it’s going to be up to the rest of us to fight for the dignity of man, which cannot include force. A mind, no matter how much anyone may try, cannot be forced and any institution based on the initiation of force commits this fundamental violation of the human being by negating his primary means of survival.

The battle of our age is moral – not political. And we are now in it. These are historic times and if you get the outlines of the battle, you can watch it unfold before you. The moral question is this:

Who owns your life? Who is the moral authority of your life? You? Or someone else like the church or the state? The church has been holding people hostage via guilt such that individuals cannot see that it is really they that are in charge of their love for their life. The state has been holding people hostage via fear of its gun such that the individuals cannot see that it is really they that are in charge of their love for their life. None of these people nor these institutions in reality have the ultimate moral authority over your life. No one can have that power because morality has to do with your love of living. Do you act in such a way that you want to live in a future you can imagine and create? Or do you act to satisfy all of the people that say that if you please them, you will have a future – even if you don’t care to live it?

I give Rush Limbaugh credit for bringing the article cited above and the connection of the church to the state during FDR's 30's to my attention on his radio program today.

Why We Are in this Mess

Last week Thursday, February 2, I watched Glenn Beck on GBTV. Rabbi Lapin who appears intermittently on his show, was featured that day.

The Rabbi talked about the eternal questions of life and said that the religions originating in the Middle East are concerned with the answer to those questions. He gave his answer for what the "not him" secularists are up to and I added what a rational man is up to.


What I noticed right away about the religionist and the secularists, according to the Rabbi, is their concern for the "not this" life. And it is their answers to those irrelevant questions that run them and shape their choices now. And, in a nutshell, that is why we are in a mess.

If you want a mess on your hands, make sure you are trying to answer and live for the "not this." That will do it every time. Nothing can clear up until you get that "this is it." This is life - right now, right here.

Beyond the obvious answer to "where we come from" why not let the scientists answer that question? And beyond the obvious answer to "where we go" why not let the scientists answer that question too?

So what would it look like if we weren't worried about whether other people believed as we do and simply created values which we used for ourselves and to trade freely with other people in order to live? What would happen if we just got on with living?

After all, that's all that is really going on - and that is not made up nor is it about the "not this." It always amazes me that I can get myself in an uproar over something someone on TV said and then go outside, meet my neighbor and have a quite civil conversation. With my neighbor, I'm always in a trading mode and we work it out so he doesn't step on me nor me on him. Why isn't the attitude at the larger scale?

Oh, now I remember, I operate observing people's individual rights. When we operate from fear, we stop doing that. And if we are trying to maintain a fiction as to why we are here, where we are going and what we ought to do in between, then there has to be an awful lot of fear that ends up running things. Isn't that sufficient to explain the mess we are in?

The Biggest Lie

Last night, Obama gave us the ultimate lie - placing him in the category of Hitler - the biggest lie possible to tell Americans. He justified collectivism - "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" - with all his moral ammunition (it's right, it's fair) and called it "All American."*

If you believe this and allow it to happen, you will have no choice but be reduced to beggar and perhaps, cannon fodder. (Oh yes, there will always be pretenders.) Obamacare, if allowed to stand, will make this real for many of us. You may be forced to give your diamond ring for medicine or a procedure for your husband, your child, your parent or yourself. And when you do, there will be no guarantee you will not be giving it to a crook who sees there is money to be made from these bribes. Read "From each according to his ability to each according to his need" for a play-by-play of how society unfolds once it no longer honors the individual and forces everyone to honor the collective. (For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand, hb, p121. - this excerpt is from Atlas Shrugged.)

What is the nature of this evil? The essential evil is that man is blocked from using his mind for producing what he needs to live - by the standard of his own life which is fueled by his values. Evil demands he live for the collective. And because of that single thing, he no longer cares to build anything. He turns into a slacker and doesn't give a shit. Morality means nothing because there is no practical application for it. At that point he gives up and accepts the system, but, he may not work to forward it.

If he accepts the system and works to rise in it, he becomes a cannibal, living off the moral energy of his fellow man. That is, he lives off the people who still believe that collectivism is valid and produce some kind of believable evidence for that possibility. When that runs out, it is every man for himself as the society is reduced to complete cynicism. Man finds himself trapped.

Although he still tries to live for himself because he is designed such, he loses himself because it is the collective's requirements that he internalizes. The connection between his own life's energy which are his individual values and why he does what he does is severed. He's thwarted at every turn. This propels him to an alternative: he is forced to dominate or be dominated, eat or be eaten. To even consider living for himself produces intense anxiety and so he's at risk of the whim of the dictator to be used as he sees fit - ala Guyana or Mao's Wars or Hitler's Wars or Stalin's mass murders, etc.

When will you get that Obama is without doubt an evil con man, a man of the lie.** We have to fight the menace he is perpetrating with every moral argument and every ounce of energy we have . It's now or never for America. I don't think there is any doubt that Obama and company will attempt to reduce America to a totalitarian state. Already he cares nothing for the Constitution and as far as he is concerned, his will, and the narrative which is getting so thin that it is worthless, is all that matters. Some of the paragraphs in his State of the Union Speech are unintelligible, so self-contradictory that if reason has any place in your mind, you might think Obama has devolved to a state of insanity. (I read where he was angry and narcissistic toward Governor Brewer of AZ because she was not cordial to Obama in her book about Arizona's situation. That is a man who is seriously run by personal issues and his will, and marks a "leader" who has lost any sense of purpose that involves the real problems that are to be solved. Whether one is cordial or not is not an argument for or against a particular result unless one is operating in the world of dominate or be dominated.) 2013 could be that year because that is when Obamacare comes into play, doctors will be quitting in droves and lots of things will come apart at the seams.



*Thanks to Robert Villegas for facilitating this condensation.
**See Scott Peck's book, People of the Lie, a study of evil.

Pay Attention Now

Saturday's result in South Carolina tells me everything I need to know to get a person off the couch and to the voting booth.

Here's an article that appeared in American Thinker written by C. Edmund Wright. It is spot on as to what to zero in on that is going on in the country right now. After my republishing it here, I add my comment.

January 22, 2012
Psst: Hear the Roar and Pay Attention
By C. Edmund Wright

After Thursday's debate was over in Charleston, I assumed that Newt had not only survived the Marianne episode, but had benefitted from it. I also figured he would win S.C. and that Santorum would fade as a challenger to him. Everyone I knew who saw the debate reached this same conclusion.

Yet as incredible as it may seem, all day Friday we were treated to multiple reviews from members of the conservative media on how Rick Santorum "won" the Thursday night debate in Charleston and that how this would help him in South Carolina. Dick Morris flatly proclaimed that Santorum did so well he might sweep in and take second from Newt Gingrich. Morris also predicted this would mean a S.C. win and nomination for Mitt Romney.

Terrence Jeffrey also proudly proclaimed a big Santorum win in the debate. On the Rush Limbaugh Show, the host refused to give his analysis, but mentioned multiple times that his personal email caucus was swept by the Pennsylvania Senator. Charles Krauthammer, meanwhile, admitted that Newt won it "in the first three minutes" but that Santorum had a very strong night after that.

And I'm thinking: what debate did these folks watch? Do they not pay attention to the crowd reaction? Do they not know what it indicates? Admittedly, Santorum got off some attacks that might have seemed like good hits, but they fell flat in the hall. Newt dominated crowd reaction, Mitt was a pretty clear second in that regard and of course Ron Paul's crowd was the few, the proud, the loud.

Santorum? All he got were those little polite 'golf claps' when someone out of contention taps in a bogey putt. Pay attention. This means the attacks Rick was selling were not being bought.

And where did the crowd roar? They roared when some premise of liberalism or some particular liberal was taken apart. No Republican on Republican crime was rewarded. Even Mitt, no favorite of the red meat crowd, got his loudest moments when he finally decided to support capitalism with some fervor. Newt of course got the big reaction over the week by attacking liberal members of the media who were either attacking conservative beliefs on the whole (Juan Williams and the race card) or protecting Obama by attacking Republicans' personal lives (John King).

The math is clear. While negative ads can be effective if run in huge numbers -- as in Iowa -- what the voters are craving in the debates and on the stump is someone who can look liberals squarely in the eye and tell them why we are right and they are wrong. The American conservative base has had to put up with being called stupid, racist, greedy and unfair for decades by not only the Democrats but the vast majority of the media. The pent up frustration of these decades is magnified by the fact that George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush and John McCain would not or perhaps could not confront this.

In fact, rare is the Republican candidate at any level who refuses to put up with this and fights back. When they do, they become sensations. Even Chris Christie and Donald Trump -- neither one a real conservative -- earned the love of the Republican base by simply deigning to fight back. Marco Rubio and Allen West are far more popular and well known than they have any right to be simply because they refuse to accept the argument on liberals' terms. They fight. They elicit the roar.

Which brings us back to the crowd roar in South Carolina. In Myrtle Beach and Charleston combined, there were probably 3-4 thousand folks total in attendance. Now while that is not significant in and of itself -- consider that every day we look at polls with far fewer folks and consider them gospel truth on everything from elections to mouthwash. In other words, my assumption was that those few thousand folks are indeed a darned good cross section of Republican voters across South Carolina and in fact the country. It wasn't the few thousand who rose to give Newt his standing ovations per se, it's that there were probably hundreds of thousands cheering at their television sets across the nation as well. That something like 60% of all likely voters in South Carolina did watch those debates was merely confirmation of just how important the crowd reaction should be assumed.

Yet the elites ignored the roar. After all, the roar came from the unwashed. It came from the fans of cockfights. It came from tea party folks and other such rabble. Inside the sterile cable studios and on their laptops, the pundits scored their debate and their election prospects without the roar. They have their little formulas about who has to raise doubts here and who has to score points there.

What they don't understand is what the roar means.

The roar is passion. The roar is intensity. The roar is pent up frustration. The roar, put another way, is the national mood of conservatives. It is a roar that will demand a fighter. It will demand that those who want our votes must not cower in the face of the liberal template. If fact, it is a roar that demands that we do not accept any liberal templates.

That's why Newt has gotten all the roars, and why he has vaulted into serious contention only days after being written off. Anyone else who wants the roar should heed the lesson. The roar comes only at the expense of liberals and liberalism. You won't get the roar attacking others on the stage. Tell your consultants to take a hike if they tell you otherwise.

That roar was an easy predictor of what would happen Saturday night in South Carolina. I knew it and everyone I know knew it late Thursday night. And it was. Seems like no one inside the beltway got it. Until Saturday evening.

My Comment:

The Republicans have a lot to learn and the Democrats have even more to learn. The people of the United States want to be treated as individuals who possess values which they are pursuing and that is what is valid. The fight back aspect of this is that Obama and his socialist nation b.s. is not what we want. That is what the Tea Party was all about; that is what that million or almost-a-million man march on Washington was all about; and that is what the 2010 election was about. We listen for the value that we, each individual American, is recognize as important and given value in the politics of this nation. Although it hasn't come down to a front and center fight over who controls one's life - one's self or the government on behalf of the collective - it's going to get to that. The fact that we possess inalienable individual rights is the heart and soul of two things - it puts the power of each individual where it belongs by nature's demand, and it names the doctrine which allows us to live in this country together and get along.

The reason Newt got me out of my chair cheering is because he's not putting up with the b.s. which does everything to displace the real power in this country. We don't like it and we are not having it. It's as simple as that. You can go to a lot of other places in the world to pull that, but it isn't happening here. Anything that touches into that mother lode of value gets a person out of his seat.

And it will get him to the voting booth.

A politician or pundit who tries to get around this is arrogant. He thinks he knows better. He thinks if he can get the power, he can siphon your energy for his purposes. No, he doesn't and no, he can't. (Atlas Shrugged taught us one thing. Producers hold the trump card and have the final say. A government man holds a gun, but he can't feed himself.) The Mr. Arrogants are not listening to what we are listening for. Instead he's running his mouth, whining or talking about narrower values or combing his hair, thinking we are buying some kind of image - anything but listening.

_________________________

This is pretty cute - and part of what is going on.

What's Wrong With Romney?

Every time people are thinking they might have to accept Romney, someone comes along and moves ahead of him. This has happened enough that it is now time to put the finger on what it is that Romney can't do and because of that, can't inspire people to follow him. None of us want to follow him by default.

Romney cannot access his passion. Given that his dad was a politician, my suspicion is he was reared in an environment that fostered compromise. He has it written all over him and his record is a testament to it.

The people are in no mood for compromise. In fact, quite the contrary. This is the year when nothing short of full battle regalia will do. Chuck Norris says, "We need a veteran of political war who has already fought Goliath."

When Romney speaks, we hear, "Yes, Mr. Obama. I understand and like socialized medicine too." They don't hear "Hell no, Obama! That program violates everyone's rights including the so-called beneficiaries, and it destroys the health industry. How many slaves do you need? And all so you can buy votes, you damn creep." Romney is not one to pick a place to stand and tell the world it's going his way, thereby attracting followers. He fishes not by offering the moral bait which the fish will happily strike at, but by calling to the fishes, "Here fishy, fishy, fishy."

The bait which attracts the people with the red blood, not blue blood, in their arteries goes something like this: "I will protect your individual rights, which by the design of nature, are yours by right and without which you cannot be fully human. I will be your champion to go out and make a living anyway you want - all so long as you do not violate your countryman's same rights. I envision a nation where we live together and trade our values for mutual benefit. I know that all you and I need is for government to get out of the way. We must reduce government's heavy-handed, unprincipled, unjust, taking-care-of-favorites intrusion (popularly known as corruption) into every aspect of our lives. If any of government's employees have good ideas to provide for people's needs, great. Let them get out there on their own to see if they can make them work - just like the rest of us. There is no us and them. There is but one people - all equal under nature's law and man's laws."

Do you get that Romney has drawn any kind of line? Do you get that he knows the difference between what works and doesn't work in the domain of a principled and just government? Or do you think he's open to compromise - on anything? Do you think he understands that any socialist principle no matter how seemingly minor is toxic and leads to further degradation of the society? Does he get that an individual man is always the final authority in his own life and that a government who doesn't protect that is anti-man and anti-life, no matter what lies are told to the contrary?

I don't.

What is The Moral?

This republished from The Order of the Heldhigh Torch website where it was published today.

The moral in human life pertains to the life force – that force within every living thing to continue living. But in humans, it pertains to the life force in a specific way because of the nature of human consciousness.

Man’s consciousness frees him from the automaticity of survival to which all living things with a simpler form of consciousness are destined. The reason is that man’s form of consciousness is conceptual. A conceptual form of consciousness is able to categorize existents by their qualities in such a way that it allows man to recombine things and create things that do not exist in nature. E.g., if a man seeks shelter, he can build a house. Although a bird can build a nest, it does so within the confines of its instincts, a form of automatic, wired-in knowledge. Man, on the other hand, can do that by recombining what he finds in nature into some new form.

To be able to do this, he uses his capacity to choose among alternatives. So, he is, by his nature, thrust into evaluating and choosing, evaluating and choosing, until he creates the value that satisfies his need. He could choose according to what feels good or appropriate in that moment, or he can consider his choice based on what he knows about the effects of his choice on his future. “Will I satisfy my hunger if I eat this plant?” Say the answer is yes. “OK then, will the plant nourish me or poison me?” Now the man is concerned with something beyond the immediate – his future. If he can answer, nourish me, then he can eat the plant, satisfying his physical need and his mind’s need, which only his mind by using reason can answer.

The moral pertains to the needs of consciousness in service of sustaining one’s life. What are the needs of consciousness? The purpose of consciousness, metaphysically, is to perceive existence for the purpose of gaining information so that the living entity may live. The needs of consciousness are anything that supports keeping that faculty able to fulfill its purpose. That can range from making a sound financial decision to listening to a symphony. The moral is concerned with the effects of one’s choices and actions to be able to sustain one’s life over time.

Man chooses. He can commit suicide – i.e., choose to die rather than live. So how a man assesses his himself and his future is crucial to his continued living. The moral is concerned with man having a future for which he wants to live. Every fact, every principle, of morality is for this purpose.

On the other hand, the immoral is to not be concerned with having a future for which he wants to live.

There is only one thing one has to do to avail himself of this area of knowledge: choose to live. Otherwise, it is of no concern. Choosing to live means choosing to think – to ask questions, evaluate and intellectually conclude so that one can make good existential choices for one’s life. Choosing to live means to be responsible for the contents of one’s mind. Choosing to live means to know how you identify a value and question whether or not it is one that forwards your life and has you want your future. Choosing to live means being concerned with a moral code – a set of principles which you live by and which support you to make the choices that do support your continued looking forward to life.

All of these are important additional topics that fall within the domain of life we call the moral.

So, does this clear up what the moral is? What it is concerned with? Why it is important?

Man's Rights

February 2, a month from now, is Ayn Rand's birthday. For a blog on liberty, her quote is especially appropriate at this crossroad for Americans' liberty:

"You cannot say that 'man has inalienable rights except in an emergency,' or 'man's rights cannot be violated except for a good purpose.' Either man's rights are inalienable, or they are not. You cannot say a thing such as 'semi-inalienable' and consider yourself either honest or sane. When you begin making conditions, reservations and exceptions, you admit that there is something or someone above man's rights, who may violate them at his discretion." —Ayn Rand

My attention to this quote is because of an entry posted on Facebook by The Objective Standard. Thank you, Craig Biddle.

Existential Equality - Man's Most Evil Social Idea?

The reason that EQUALITY is so horrible is because it empowers envy. Envy is the hatred of the good because it is good. If Michael Jordan plays basketball better than anyone else, an envious person feels hatred and wants to cut off his legs or hurt his ability to be that good. He is not drawn to maximize his capacities and compete with Michael Jordan. In fact, he recoils (shrivels?) at the thought of that. Rather, he upholds the idea that people should be EQUAL, not under the law, but in wealth, property of various kinds, talents, grades, salaries --- you name it. This neutralizes the moral threat that a Jordan or any authentic life-serving value represents.

And it is a moral threat, not an existential threat, that he fears. Jordan, or any authentic good, is not going to hurt you. The fact that you drive by a rich man's house does not produce an existential threat to your life. The idea of EQUALITY is the attempt to find an existential solution for a moral threat. For the envious, the good reminds them how wretched, by their own standard, they are and so they feel compelled to block that out.

This is the evil that sources and fuels every war - that justifies one country attacking another rather than work out ways of trading values. It is the evil that fuels people hating rich people and it is this evil that Obama seeks to ride to his continued dominance of this country.

I think for this reason, Obama is the most effective spokesman for evil in our time. His oratorical skills, mild manner and good looks give the impression that he is not to be worried about - that he is to be invited into your home. History and literature is filled with the mild-mannered, reasonable-sounding person causing the descent of man to hell. "Paul M. Warburg is probably the mildest-mannered man that ever personally conducted a revolution. It was a bloodless revolution: he did not attempt to rouse the populace to arms. He stepped forth armed simply with an idea. And he conquered. That's the amazing thing. A shy, sensitive man, he imposed his idea on a nation of a hundred million people. (Harold Kellock, "Warburg, the Revolutionist," The Century Magazine, May 1915, p. 79)

What was the idea he foisted onto the American people? That the Federal Reserve Bank was an idea whose time had come - that it would be a benefit to the American public. What was the essence of the purpose of the cabal of banks that constituted the Federal Reserve? That they would hold interest artificially low so that people would be attracted to borrowing. People borrowing is how banks make money - big money. The Federal Reserve Bank sired America, the nation, and Americans, the individuals, to become debtors - i.e., beholden to someone else. It sourced the materialism (having stuff not because it serves your values, but as an end in itself)that people blame capitalism for by making it easy to obtain goods via cheap loans rather than go through the longer process of earning and saving the money to buy those goods. If there is anything that is true of America and Americans generally, it is that they owe somebody. Our personal and national conversations are constantly about how to keep the debt persisting. Bail out this and bail out that; refinance this, refinance that. The men who formed the Federal Reserve Bank and the mild-mannered Frank Warburg are at the root of this American disease. (See The Creature of Jekyll Island by G. Edward Griffin, 2002, American Media for more information on the formation of the Federal Reserve Bank.) (Damning materialism is a fine line. I don't damn spending because you have the money and want to enjoy it. I do damn spending when it is done at the expense of one's larger values related to an essential serenity for your life.)

(The big banks had to do something. Businessmen were doing well enough at the time that they could finance their expansion from their savings out of profit and this was hurting the big banks ability to sell loans. So what they did was have it make sense to borrow rather than save by artificially lowering the interest rate. Whatever they thought they had to do, to use government force to accomplish it was not the moral way to do it. In other words, they refused to create value that people would be attracted to because it was a value. They had to use government force to make themselves valuable. This is always the way of an evil person. They can never show you why something works and is good. They have to force you, against the logic of your own mind, to accept it/them.)

In The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand, 1943, Bobbs-Merrill Co, Inc.) we see Ellsworth Toohey, the mild-mannered intellectual who constantly speaks for the value of the group and the lowest common denominator of every profession as examples of the moral ideal. He attracts those that want to be valued, but have no idea nor inclination to earn it. He is the spiritual fuel for the losers of the story and in particular, Peter Keating, the second-hander architect.

Jesus said the "Meek shall inherit the earth." That is so if only you can somehow drag the best, most talented, most able producers of value, down to equal status with the least. Only by that means, covering your poison with honey, can you seduce and guilt the unwary strong.

Listen to this excellent debate on the Role of Government where Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute is pitted against David Callahan of Demos, a progressive liberal-left organization based in New York City. Listen to the smooth, oily presumptive way that Callahan presents his case. This means of delivery to foist anti-life, anti-man ideas onto an unthinking public is a cardinal sign of evil's most effective persuaders. When you are speaking from your values, not anti-values which no one can practice, there is an authentic energy of life present that is never present in the anti-life person. Learn to smell that difference.

Existential equality is impossible. It cannot be attained except if everyone is put to death - which, ironically, the people of this type always overtly or covertly have at the bottom of their ideas. Take the environmentalists who hate industry and would sacrifice their wife, husband or child's life by destroying the means for living - like electricity - to their love of a snail darter. Or take Jesus Christ who tried to show us something by setting up his death on the cross. Or look at North Korea which on the map at night is dark. No light at all. These are all united by one maxim: Hate the good at all costs.

There is but one alternative that works: Choose life; create values which sustain and are everywhere consistent with life. Get busy. 2012 is ready to take off.

Debt Limit - A Guide to What is Going on.

The guy requesting more debt is postmodernist philosophy in action. He's acting as if his world of values is the truth even though it does not correspond to reality. We see this same absurd way of being in President Obama.

Postmodernist philosophy holds that everything is political and if enough people believe something, it is true. Not!

Obama Destroys the Middle Class

Obama has ordered a Mennonite health insurer to not raise their rates. This is as iconic as it's going to get that Obama is out to destroy the middle class and make sure that in true Marxian fashion, everyone except he and his cronies are laborers. This is cutting off the American dream at the knees.

This past summer, I raised my rates to my clients. I'm an architect and I'd been charging the same rates since the mid-90s. But when inflation began eating away my ability to live, I had to bite the bullet and raise my rates. I didn't want to. I didn't want to create a situation where they could now tell me they didn't want to hire me anymore. Every businessman goes through this kind of trial by fire - especially the smaller businesses.

So when I read this article with the headline Obama tells insurer to reverse rate hike I thought I was going to blow a gasket. How could he order this company to not ask for higher rates?

"The Obama administration on Monday called on a Mennonite-owned health insurance company to cancel its proposed 11.6 percent rate hike, marking the first time the government has tried to pressure a private company under the new health care law. [I raised my rates 50%. P]

"While Pennsylvania-based Everence Insurance said it needs to raise rates on about 5,000 customers to cover costs, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius called the increase “unreasonable,” holding it up as evidence that the government has an important role to play in reining in the cost of coverage.

“'This sends a message to insurers around the country that the days of unchecked, double-digit increases are over,' Mrs. Sebelius said." [Translation: The days of you using your own mind and intelligence are over. P]

This is fascism straight up - not fizzed, not on the rocks, nothing but pure, unadulterated variety of fascism. Fascism is a system of government that allows, even encourages people to own property - i.e., possess the title to it and all the liabilities of it and then orders them to use and dispose of their property as the government decides. This is as evil as politics can get. The people end up with the liabilities and the government ends up with the benefits. It is not an ounce better in principle than the Southern version of enslavement of blacks. In fact, it is the same thing in another form.

Communism, bad as it is, is more truthful as to what it is. It's time people stop candy-coating Obama and call him out for who he is. He, one of human history's biggest con men, is out to destroy human lives (in the name of ministering to the victims of life, the poor and unable) by destroying their entrepreneurial spirit and ingenuity. He is commanding out of existence the essence of being human - being a creator of values. Obama, has a lot of people fooled as a humane president while he is exactly the opposite. He dooms millions of people to poverty and and actively kills off any dream of having a better life. America could not have a worse example of humanity than Barack and Michelle Obama and not only is America suffering from this life-shattering malady, but so is the world. If you want to destroy human being, what you do is destroy possibility for him. And that is precisely what the Obamas are doing.

Never have I experienced such a painful period of history. Where I work, I talk to people from all over the world and in all walks of life. The people who are most disappointed with the Obamas, besides the Americans who know what is going on, are the people who emigrated to the US for the American dream. Whether they come from Columbia or India, the reason is always the same - so they could work hard and have a future for their kids. And don't tell me they don't see what is happening. Of course they do and they openly express it. Only those Americans who have been indoctrinated into thinking socialist or thinking social justice don't see it. They are gobbling up huge mouthfuls of this garbage and thinking it is a Thanksgiving feast. Little do they know.

America better wake up or there won't be a country on the face of the earth that holds the individual life above all else - that forms its government to protect not the welfare, but the individual rights of its citizens. It guarantees nothing about the results of life. All it does is protect your right to pursue your life and not be besieged by predators, i.e., criminals. But because we have lost the distinction of liberty, we now we have a Criminal-in-Chief in the White House. The cost of this is mind-boggling and we will pay for it for generations.

Three years ago, the Ayn Rand Institute said America must get itself re-oriented and grounded in liberty in twenty years, otherwise, America will be done and gone. This is the battle we are now in. Now is the time to get your butt "to the barricades" and stand for liberty every place you go. Now is the time to acknowledge that we are in a war for our lives. And we win this war or the light of possibility for your future and your progeny's future will go extinguished. Choose.

The Democrats are the Neo-Communists

Rothbard Destroys A Common Statist Argument

I agree with this in every respect except one: society does need a State with no power except the control of the retaliatory use of force when a citizen violates another citizen's rights. Such a State must be designed to possess a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force. (No man or State can prevent initiatory force if a man chooses to initiate the force.) The State is to possess this monopoly so long as the Constitution which grants this monopoly gives ALL rights of control to the people. If it objectively violates its charter, the people have the right to destroy it and begin anew. The monopoly on the use of retaliatory force is essential to prevent thrusting the society into perpetual turf wars of competing defense companies.

Blacks Need to Kick Obama's Ass

Never have we, in my lifetime, had a more racist President. Racism means that one assesses and judges a man by the color of his skin. One doesn't look at a person's talents nor his character. Only his skin color matters. Skin color is the first and only means that one ought to use to know how to treat a person - says a racist.

Today I read an article with this headline: Obama Seeks Ideas on Reducing Black Joblessness.

What's wrong with this? First of all, it doesn't recognize how jobs are created. Jobs don't know race. That's a matter arbitrarily imposed on the issue. From this question, I wouldn't be surprised if Obama came up with the solution of enslaving blacks. After all, all slaves had a job. They didn't get paid with money and didn't have freedom, but they did have food and a place to stay - you know, government-level for providing stuff. Sounds perfect.

Because Obama singles out blacks, he treats them as a collective. What does this mean? It means that blacks, since he's using his bully pulpit to lead on this matter, are to be treated as part of this collective. Now, you and I know that in any group, there are good people and bad, talented people and people with little or no talent, meritorious people and those who aren't worth a damn. But, if Obama is asking us - all of us who are listening - to treat blacks as a collective as he is doing, then in order to protect ourselves, we will be forced to judge them all by the lowest common denominator. So, in effect, looking at a black, one has to say to himself (given Obama's lead here) that you can't trust them to do what you want? Why? Because there are some in this group that cannot be trusted - or should I say, can be trusted to be lazy, steal from you, not be a man of his word, etc. - and since we can only use skin color as the way to judge these people, then for our own self-protection we must avoid them.

This is the vile and evil nature of a racist. And make no mistake, Obama is a racist or he would never say something like what he is saying. Every day he opens his mouth, he makes life more difficult for all blacks. And this is why they need to kick his ass.

As for me, I reject Obama entirely because I reject collectivism entirely. A collectivist always destroys the best of men in favor of the worst of men.

The valid alternative to Obama's hideous racism (and John Lewis's and the Congressional Black Caucus's too) is Individual Rights - where every man is recognized as the owner of his life and is free to make it what he wants. What benefits blacks is the same for all people, not to minister to their neediness but to protect their individual rights and yes, I mean only the NEGATIVE rights.