tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-130958882024-02-19T02:29:59.032-07:00PubliusThe Voice of Reason. A look at contemporary philosophy and politics from outside the Left vs. Right continuum.
<A HREF="http://publiusetiam.blogspot.com/atom.xml">RSS FEED</A>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-27100651582750509182021-10-23T09:15:00.003-06:002021-10-23T09:15:46.394-06:00Self-loathing is the root of Marxism<p> <span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: inherit; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Marxists think having to work for a living is "slavery".</span></p><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Let that sink in.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">We are living beings. We require certain things for our survival. Those things don't magically appear before us. We have to work for them. Food, shelter, and all the things we have created in our industrial civilization, have to be CREATED through productive effort.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">For most people, there is nothing bad about this - it's a fact of life, and, many of us find satisfaction and joy from the effort. We work to sustain and improve our lives, which we love.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Marxists rail against this fact, and call it an "injustice". They call it "slavery". Terms like "wage slavery" are what they call having a job.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So, to be clear: Marxists hate work. Because they hate the idea of working to sustain their lives. Because they hate their lives. Because, at root, they don't believe they are competent to do the things the rest of us do - creative productive effort. So they hate themselves.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The Marxist self-loathing is seen everywhere, in every policy position they fight for, in everything they say and do.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes it comes out without polish, as with the "Voluntary Human Extinction Movement". That's a real thing, look it up.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Often times it is hidden beneath a layer or two. Entire industries decimated, like coal, or manufacturing generally, and the response is "Learn to Code" - the modern "Let them Eat Cake". Meanwhile those Marxists in government (or other orgs) live like kings - not through productive effort, but through the raw exercise of power. Through theft, through graft, through corruption.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">The Marxists thrive in this milieu - because power over others (temporarily) assuages their feelings of inadequacy. If they can't do something productive, at least they can control others.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">But that is a bad, sick, sad outcome for them.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); color: #050505; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; white-space: pre-wrap; word-wrap: break-word;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Marxists at root are pathetic beings that are mentally ill - constantly at war with their own lives, and hurting any others that get in the way of that battle and the many ways they try to avoid recognizing their own self-loathing.</div></div>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-26520800050526639182019-07-03T08:28:00.002-06:002019-07-03T08:28:44.046-06:00Life-affirming Values Deserve Better than Ridicule<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When leftist/progressives employ ridicule, they seek to destroy - ridicule demolishes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When they employ sarcasm, they seek to destroy - mockery is destruction.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When they use the argument from intimidation - accusing their opponents of racism, or lack of compassion - they destroy.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When they engage "political correctness" - literally, banning the use of "politically incorrect" words, really, thoughts - they destroy.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When they attend speeches by opponents and shout them down so loudly their opponent cannot effectively speak, they are destroying.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When they riot, rampage, loot and burn, they are destroying - directly.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">What they are doing is literally destroying thoughts in the minds of others - before those others can clarify and consider thoughts opposed to the leftists. They are actually doing battle inside the minds of their opponents, shutting down those minds before they can become a threat.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It is one thing when leftists do this. The modern leftist is at root a nihilist. Destruction is their goal so acts of destruction in the guise of ridicule, sarcasm, or intimidation is fully consistent with their mentality. Destruction is their goal, destruction is their tool.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It saddens me when activists on the right start to adopt these same tactics.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Our values of liberty, freedom, independence and peaceable trade among men are life-affirming values, in direct contrast to and opposite the values of the modern left, which are nihilist and life-denying.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">When we speak to people of our life-affirming, </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">positive</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> values but do it in a negative, nihilist manner the same as the left - we undercut our own argument. We </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">demolish our own values</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">The intellectual battle we are in is not a laughing matter. It is not an appropriate subject for childish sarcasm, insults, tearing-down.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">It is deadly serious and it will help our cause greatly if we treat life and death matters seriously - and in a positive manner, in accord with the life-</span><i style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">affirming</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"> nature of our values.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1c1e21; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-29886925343559298732017-09-10T13:27:00.001-06:002017-09-10T13:27:02.853-06:00Is Government "just the name we give to things we do together"?<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
"Government is just the name we give to the things we do together."</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Well, no. This is a truly deceptive statement.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Because look here, there are many, many human institutions where people get together to do things.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Churches.<br />Clubs.<br />Corporations.<br />Non-profits.<br />Families.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
And these all have their own unique characteristics.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
If government was simply a variety of these, or vice-versa, why would we bother to have a unique word for it?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
If government were *merely* a charity, wouldn't we just call it a charity?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
What is it about government then that makes it unique?</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
I'll tell you. It's the use of force. Government is the sole human institution that legitimately exercises physical force against others.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Churches don't commit violence. Corporations don't use physical coercion to get you to buy their products or to work for them. Families don't (shouldn't) do that.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
BECAUSE government's essence is the use of force, government simply should not do many things, even if those things would be right and proper for individuals to do.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
Take your church. It's morally fine for your church to persuade you to donate, and for you to donate.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
But now add the element of force. It would be morally wrong and abhorrent for government to FORCE you to give money to a church, whether through taxes, or a more direct approach of coming and taking your property under threat, for instance.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
You see? Many actions that are acceptable and moral when done voluntarily, become immoral when you force people to do them.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
So people who say "government is just the things we do together" are actually trying to obliterate that very, very important distinction. They are trying to get you to accept the routine, everyday use of force and violence. They are trying to obliterate the difference between persuasion and coercion.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-top: 6px;">
They are trying to get you to accept that government ought to be able to do anything, to anyone, and use force to do it. Yet that way lies tragedy.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; display: inline; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; margin-top: 6px;">
Don't fall for it.</div>
Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-90699474836271464222017-07-26T22:45:00.002-06:002017-07-26T22:45:33.634-06:00Transparency needed in investigations of policeI have not sat on a grand jury any time in my life. I am disinclined, having not pored through records, nor listened to dozens of witnesses, to second-guess the difficult decisions these jurors have had to make.<br />
<br />
HOWEVER. There is a clear problem of trust going on, and it stems from a couple different sources.<br />
<br />
1) Grand Juries are usually secret. There are good reasons for this. Simply investigating whether a crime might have occurred, which is what Grand Juries do, collects a lot of evidence which could put people's lives at risk, or could be embarrassing. You want folks to feel free to talk. And you don't want the person being investigated to get unduly smeared.<br />
<br />
However, the flip side of secrecy is that the lack of transparency can lead to a loss of trust. Clearly, in the two incidents discussed recently, many people who have no idea what went on in the GJ's or what evidence was presented, know, they just KNOW, an injustice was committed! And, because they have no opportunity to see the evidence, well, they are prevented from seeing anything that might change their mind.<br />
<br />
The purpose of a Grand Jury is not to rubber-stamp a prosecutor's decision. If Grand Juries virtually always return an indictment, there are several possible explanations. a) Prosecutors don't submit to a GJ unless they think they can get an indictment. b) GJs actually do just rubber-stamp indictments. In the two recent cases of police under scrutiny by a GJ, it was political pressure that got the cases even that far - these cases were pro-forma the other way, almost stunts, to try to placate the public, but were done knowing there probably was not enough evidence to get an indictment. The final possibility is that everyone who sits on a GJ loves loves loves cops. This seems unlikely. It might also be that incidents involving officers are much more thoroughly investigated, and that officers generally act with restraint - it's hard to get indictments because they did not act wrongly.<br />
<br />
But again, the general public has no idea what's going on. With basically all GJ proceedings secret, all the public has to judge on is the statistics: few police are indicted, almost everyone else is.<br />
<br />
Since no information is available, the general public has no basis on which to decide whether to agree or disagree with the GJ results.<br />
<br />
And in the case of police officers, this is a serious problem for public trust of the government.<br />
<br />
2) Investigations of police killings are done internally<br />
<br />
The police investigate crimes, so I suppose from a certain sense they are the group who you would call to investigate a potential murder by a police officer.<br />
<br />
Also, police unions are extremely protective of officers. There is a tendency to "circle the wagons" whenever an incident like this occurs.<br />
<br />
So police officers are investigated by police officers. Sometimes it's done by an "Internal Affairs" division, which is supposed to give the appearance of independence, but which are staffed by other cops, probably ones the accused has known and worked with for years.<br />
<br />
I humbly submit that this is all horribly, horribly wrong.<br />
<br />
Forget perception. The potential for actual conflict of interest is so high with the current system, I cannot blame anyone for not trusting the results of internal police investigations.<br />
<br />
3) Media hype<br />
<br />
It is impossible for the public to fairly evaluate a case through the media. News reporters search out the absolute most incendiary tidbit of information - even if it's been manufactured whole cloth - and put it on a 24/7 news cycle, apparently without much regard for whether it's true or not. This means the public is probably already going to be hopelessly biased on a case before any kind of investigation has been done, certainly long before a trial.<br />
<br />
So after months of incomplete, inaccurate information being presented on CNN or Fox, when a Grand Jury makes a decision that seems to fly in the face of the conclusion people drew based on only the media, this makes everyone actually involved in the case look bad.<br />
<br />
<br />
What would I do?<br />
<br />
First off, I think police-involved killings should be investigated by a completely independent level of government. If a city cop is being investigated, the State level should do it. If a state cop, the Feds. If Federal, prosecute from the State in which the incident occurred.<br />
<br />
Everything possible must be done to ensure no potential for actual or perceived conflict of interest. The investigators should not know the accused, or have worked for the accused's department.<br />
<br />
We could go even further, and create a new, independent Constitutional body whose sole purpose is to hold public officials accountable to the law, which would investigate and prosecute solely public sector actors.<br />
<br />
Second, all such investigations should be completely transparent. While I often loathe the media, you cannot have freedom without a free press, as bad as it often is. All materials related to the investigation should, by default, be publicly available from the get-go, during and after the investigation, and should be made secret only on approval by a judge for some specific, important purpose. We all have an interest and a right in being able to see for ourselves that the government is acting within the law.<br />
<br />
This is, after all, an investigation not of a private citizen who has rights to privacy, but of a government agent acting in performance of their official duty. The value of transparency and trust in this process outweighs the usual concerns, because these actions involve the official use of force. We absolutely have to scrutinize this as honestly and regularly as possible.<br />
<br />
It would be nice if the press would, you know, exhibit some responsibility and act as if someone's life is on the line. Which it is. I'm not going to list the things press should do to assure accuracy. They already know what they're supposed to do, they already know the rules of good journalism. They just ignore them. So, to the press I say - start taking your responsibility seriously.<br />
<br />
We have to be careful, in all of this, not to make it impossible for officers to do their job. Being a police officer is really difficult. You have to be able to make snap decisions that cause others to live or die. Police are a critical, fundamental requirement of a free society. We don't want them to be second-guessing themselves when someone's life is on the line.<br />
<br />
But they have legal sanction to use force - we the people have delegated retribution to the police. This is a terrible responsibility, and a dangerous one. It deserves the absolute highest level of oversight, independent investigation, and we need to do everything possible so that the public trusts that police forces are held accountable to the law.Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-58048100632427182352017-07-26T22:42:00.001-06:002017-07-26T22:42:04.427-06:00The Root of Violent ExtremismWe are too flippant about writing off violent extremists as "crazy", "psychopathic", etc.<br />
<br />
Just because *we* have a hard time conceiving of doing violence to others, does not mean that those who do are insane.<br />
<br />
Hitler was not insane. Hitler was evil. There is a distinction.<br />
<br />
To be insane, to be "crazy", means you cannot understand the difference between right and wrong.<br />
<br />
People like Hitler, like ISIS, these people are *evil*. They have, in what they believe to be a rational process, *chosen* to embrace a death-worshipping morality.<br />
<br />
Such thinking is going to lead us down wrong alleys in dealing with violent political extremism.<br />
<br />
Unless we understand the various reasons why such people embrace philosophies of death, we cannot combat the root causes and defeat violent extremism.<br />
<br />
Obama's "they need jobs" is a juvenile approach at this. But you simply cannot ignore and dismiss the reality of life in the countries that are the flash-points of extremism.<br />
<br />
Look at America today. It is overall one of the most peaceful nations in the world. That was not always the case. In this country people burned witches, lynched blacks, slaughtered Indians, machine-gunned each other over alcohol turf.<br />
<br />
Some of this is the fact that, as a culture, we have increasingly adopted a philosophy that values non-violence.<br />
<br />
But another big part of the change is that we are extremely wealthy, successful, nobody in this country is in fear of starving the next day, or living in a daily fear of being slaughtered.<br />
<br />
People who live in constant fear and privation - as *many* of the people in the Muslim world do - are easily manipulated.<br />
<br />
This is a simple fact of human nature.<br />
<br />
Today in some countries it's the violent tyrannical approach to Islam. 80 years ago it was starvation and humiliation in Germany. In any place or time you care to look in history where there was a mass movement around a self-destructive philosophy of death, there is a dysfunctional culture, there is a lack of freedom, there is privation, and there is constant fear.<br />
<br />
This creates a sense of hopelessness, helplessness, powerlessness.<br />
<br />
Out of this soup often arises charismatic leaders who promise to end the suffering, and most importantly promise empowerment. And what, to a mind in a state of constant fear, is more empowering than knowing you now have the power to kill and to control others?<br />
<br />
The particular ideology is not that important. They *all* end up being one where it's ok to kill others who are different, who disagree. If you look at all of the violent conflicts in the world today, there are many involving Islam but a great many that do NOT. If we abstract from all those, you arrive at the conclusions I have made.<br />
<br />
Now there are other types and situations of people that join up with these Jihadis. Of the ones who go to fight in Syria from America, or the UK, or other Western countries, note that many of them are young. The Boston bombers were kids. In my mind, these share the same mental issues as the Columbine killers and other school shooters - and in this respect, share the same mental issue with the Jihadis, though with different underlying root causes. They act out violently in an attempt to feel empowered. Even though the "home-grown" terrorists come from good families and have money, everyone understands that the teen psyche and the pressures on it can go wrong and result in violent outbursts. For some, Jihadi Islam presents a uniquely attractive outlet for that emotion. But Islam had nothing to do with Columbine, or Aurora, or Oklahoma City, nor do any of the school shootings we have every year. If some of these kids adopt Jihad as their rationalization for violence, it doesn't mean Muslims are about to take over the US in a violent revolution.<br />
<br />
George Bush's foreign policy approach to the Jihadi threat was several-fold. One is, let's fight them outside the US. We should not restrict people from traveling to Syria to fight. If someone here falls for this stuff and gets radicalized, not only should we not prevent them from going, we should buy them a freaking plane ticket. We *should* refuse to ever let them back in again, and we should do our very best to kill them far from American shores. Two, we have to do something to fight the sense of powerlessness that makes people easily manipulated into violence. Bush's thought was, hey, let's export Democracy. Give people in these countries a voice, a way to change things other than violence. Our political system in the US is actually a key element in why the US no longer has any significant political violence. We also know that countries that are open, capitalist, and democratic have never gone to war with each other.<br />
<br />
Forcing a democratic government on other countries has not worked in the Muslim world, nor has drawing arbitrary borders and expecting them to act like nation-states when they are not.<br />
<br />
So, we need some other approach. Obama's suggestion of a jobs program is beyond nonsensical. But the fact is that words on a page do not have any power to control a human mind. Human beings have to *choose* to adopt philosophies of death and violence.<br />
<br />
In summary, it is important for us to understand the psychological basis of violent extremism - in particular, the fear, the void of positive philosophy, into which a charismatic leader can pour a violent ideology.Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-44892234361452625062017-07-20T16:23:00.004-06:002017-07-20T16:23:31.848-06:00Millennials don't understand free speechA response to this article by a (presumably) Millennial telling "other generations" how we've got it all wrong. I guess, how we all need to be nice and considerate and stuff..<br />
<br />
<br />
Well-done. You've managed to publicly pat yourself on the back for your
great moral wisdom - stuff the rest of human race has been aware of and
done for hundreds if not thousands of years.<br />
<br />
This article exhibits typical Millennial fallacies:<br />
a) complete ignorance of history and human nature<br />
b) feeling superior for believing the right things - things you read on the internet - and which you believe you invented.<br />
c) condescending arrogance<br />
<br />
PC is NOT as you described. PC is in fact about restricting free speech.
The whole point of free speech, the reason it is protected? If people
only ever said unoffensive things, well, there would be no need to
protect that, would there? Nobody would object to unoffensive speech.<br />
<br />
It is precisely those words and ideas that cause discomfort - often to
entrenched power - that require protection from those who would suppress
such speech because they don't want to feel offense, they don't want to
feel uncomfortable. These are people in power, people who support the
power, people in government, and others in authority.<br />
<br />
You act like the only ideas that could possibly cause offense must be
bad ideas. Well, buddy, I guarantee you a lot of whites were offended by
the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. but guess what - that temporary
emotional displacement is what got people to change.<br />
<br />
So you are absolutely, totally wrong. Free speech is *precisely* the freedom to say things that make other people uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
Original article:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.inc.com/matthew-jones/5-things-all-millennials-want-gen-xers-to-know-abo.html">https://www.inc.com/matthew-jones/5-things-all-millennials-want-gen-xers-to-know-abo.html</a><br />
<br />Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-53692617972262961052015-12-28T14:48:00.002-07:002015-12-28T15:08:17.239-07:00The Bill of Rights<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">There
are three types of operative clauses in the Bill of Rights.</span></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">1) Individual right – an
unambiguous, unqualified right of the people</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">2) Individual civil right –
a specification of process intended to protect individuals from
government abuse of power</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">3) individual
administrative right -</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Here are the first ten
Amendments (sans 2<sup>nd</sup> Amendment) and identification of each
type of right next to the operative clause.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
I (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion <b>(individual right)</b>, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof <b>(individual right)</b>; or
abridging the freedom of speech <b>(individual right)</b>, or of the
press <b>(individual right)</b>; or the right of the people peaceably
to assemble <b>(individual right)</b>, and to petition the government
for a redress of grievances <b>(individual right)</b>.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Amendment
II, see below)</span></h3>
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
III (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">No soldier shall, in time
of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner
<b>(individual right)</b>, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be
prescribed by law.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
IV (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The right of the people to
be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated <b>(individual
right)</b>, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized
<b>(individual civil right)</b>.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
V (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">No person shall be held to
answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a
presentment or indictment of a grand jury <b>(individual Civil
right)</b>, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or
in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public
danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be
twice put in jeopardy of life or limb <b>(individual civil right)</b>;
nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against
himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law <b>(individual Civil right)</b>; nor shall private
property be taken for public use, without just compensation.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
VI (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">In all criminal
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and
public trial <b>(individual civil right)</b>, by an impartial jury of
the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed
<b>(individual civil right)</b>, which district shall have been
previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and
cause of the accusation (individual civil right); to be confronted
with the witnesses against him <b>(individual civil right)</b>; to
have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor
<b>(individual civil right)</b>, and to have the assistance of
counsel for his defense <b>(individual civil right)</b>.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
VII (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">In suits at common law,
where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right
of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury,
shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than
according to the rules of the common law.<b> </b><b>(individual
administrative right)</b></span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
VIII (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Excessive bail shall not be
required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted <b>(individual civil right)</b>.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
IX (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The enumeration in the
Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or
disparage others retained by the people.</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
X (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The powers not delegated to
the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.</span><br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">In all the other
Amendments, there is not one single phrase that limits freedom of the
people, or that grants new power to government. All these Amendments
refer to unambiguous, unlimited individual rights, or rights of
process (civil rights) intended to protect individuals.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Yet liberals would have us
believe that this:</span><br />
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
II (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A well regulated militia,
being necessary to the security of a free state, <b>the right of the
people to keep and bear arms</b>, shall not be infringed.</span><br />
<h3 class="western" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Really
means this:</span></h3>
<h3 class="western">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Amendment
II (1791)</span></h3>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">A well regulated militia,
being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the
<b>government</b> to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.</span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-76597417985133955762013-11-13T21:58:00.002-07:002013-11-13T21:58:27.827-07:00Republicans must not give moral sanction to ObamaCare<span style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;">This whole ObamaCare episode is incredibly evocative of the final chapters of Atlas Shrugged.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;">In the novel, as the country is falling apart, there is chaos and confusion on the part of the pro-totalitarian-government forces and their acolytes.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: grey; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;">Some admit the whole purpose of the exercise was to gain power for themsel</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: grey; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.909090995788574px; line-height: 12.727272033691406px;">ves, and they don't really care if the nation falls apart to get it. Some are terrified and confused.<br /><br />And some (the "Leader" Thompson in the book) don't know what to do - and that's why they arrest John Galt and try to make him an Economic Dictator - under the premise that he can force all the terrible laws they've been passing to somehow achieve good result.<br /><br />John Galt refused to go along with this charade, knowing that the whole root of the collapse was people using force to replace the choices of others with their own:<br /><br />Galt: "If you order me to issue a directive, I will issue the directive you order me to issue."<br />Thompson: "Oh, but I don't know what directives to issue!"<br />Galt: "I don't, either."<br />There was a long pause.<br />"Well", said Galt? "What are your orders?"<br />"I want you to save the economy of the country!"<br />"I don't know how to save it."<br />"I want you to find a way!"<br />"I don't know how to find it."<br />"I want you to think!"<br />"How will your gun make me do that, Mr. Thompson?"<br /><br />A very scared Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana backed by a number of other Democrat Senators, including Dianne Feinstein of California, has written a bill commanding insurance companies to allow individuals to keep their old insurance plans. Landrieu does not know what directives to issue, but she thinks all she has to do is order insurance companies - as Mr. Thompson does above - to "find a way!".<br /><br />Some Republicans and a majority of the country have already told these progressive leaders how to fix this problem - to "get out of the way". But repeal of ObamaCare and the rest of the crushing regulatory burden on doctors, hospitals, and insurance companies is anathema to the "progressives":<br /><br />Thompson: "We want you to tell us what to do!"<br />Galt: "I told you what to do."<br />"What?"<br />"Get out of my way."<br />"That's impossible! That's fantastic! That's out of the question!"<br />...<br />Galt: "I said it can't be done."<br />Thompson: "YOU could do it."<br />"How?"<br />"Somehow." He heard Galt's chuckle, and added, "Why not? Just tell me why not?"<br />"Okay, I'll tell you. You want me to be the Economic Dictator?"<br />"Yes!"<br />"And you'll obey any order I give?"<br />"Implicitly!"<br />"Then start by abolishing all income taxes."<br />"Oh, no!" screamed Mr. Thompson, leaping to his feet. "We couldn't do that!"<br /><br />Progressives have been screaming the past week now that Republicans have to take ownership! Republicans have to step in and help try to "fix" ObamaCare!<br /><br />As Galt did in the novel Atlas Shrugged, the Republicans but more importantly we the people must be prepared to let the destructive progressive policies of the past 70 years come to their logical conclusion - in utter, abject failure and destruction - before we can begin to rebuild an intellectual foundation of individual liberty and free markets.<br /><br />Republicans, please, let the Democrats and their progressive friends flail and fail. The only "help" they want from us is our moral sanction - and that is the one thing we absolutely should not give.</span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-25410616376524877262013-10-19T23:43:00.000-06:002013-10-19T23:43:22.981-06:00Liberty and Society Can Exist Together - via Property Rights<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Liberty is our birthright - our nature - our requirement for survival.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">In the dawn of time Man was born into Liberty. In the State of Nature, man is free. He must seek, then create, the means of his survival - his food, his shelter. It is not given to him, it is not automatic. In the State of Nature, a man alone keeps what he makes through the use of his own reason.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Then man invented Society and Government - and every government from the beginning of time until the founding of the United States was based not on Liberty, but on Force and Coercion.</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;"><br /><br />Every Government from the beginning of time has ended after injustice, torture, enslavement and death of its own people, followed by conquest, murder and enslavement from outside.<br /><br />This is because we chose Government of expediency - government of tradition - government of the jungle - government of force. We chose a Government in contradiction with our need for Individual Liberty.<br /><br />But at the founding of the United States, for perhaps the first time in all history on any scale, man had Liberty AND Society. Or came very, very close to it. We were able to accomplish this through recognizing Man's need for Liberty, and defining Rights to ensure that man had Liberty even in Society. Property rights being the primary concept governing our interactions with our fellow man, to ensure everyone's Liberty.<br /><br />This solved the supposed contradiction between Individual Freedom and Society.<br /><br />The natural extension of that achievement was corporate business enterprises starting in the mid 1800's.<br /><br />Inviolate property rights is how each man can in effect have a world to himself, a recreation of the State of Nature - even while living in Society. Inviolate property rights are how each man can share himself and his capital (and the world) with others in a business, to achieve greater ends than one man can alone.<br /><br />In the 230 years since, however, we have lost our way. We have assaulted the rights of Property every Congress until today, we have a Congress that once again treats us as chattel, actually forcing us to buy products we don't even want. We allowed those who love the real force of the gun, to convince us that our working together voluntarily in corporation was the same as force. In a dramatic moral inversion, the force of the gun became "good" and people working together voluntarily became "force" and evil.<br /><br />We have but to retrace our steps to 1776, review the errors we made, and return walking forward - with a determination to respect inviolate property and economic rights of our fellow man - including those who work together in corporation. We must ban the initiation of force in private relationships - including by the Government. We must rigorously define Property rights in accordance with the requirements of Man's nature.<br /><br />We must be free.</span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-4384689686956505872013-02-27T14:28:00.001-07:002013-02-27T14:28:18.291-07:00Donna Brazile - time to take your head out of the sand.<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;">Donna Brazile tweets that she cannot understand why her health insurance premiums just went up.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;">Only someone guilty of gross mental and moral evasion could ask this.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><a data-hovercard="/ajax/hovercard/page.php?id=112251162121183&extragetparams=%7B%22group_id%22%3A0%7D" href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Donna-Brazile/112251162121183?group_id=0" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; text-decoration: initial;">Donna Brazile</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;">, conservatives and libertarians have spent the last two years explaining to morons like you why the price of health insurance was going to skyrocket under Obamacare.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;">It's not that you're too stupid to understand. It's that you *evaded* the truth, you willfully put blinders on.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;">It's time for people like you to get out of the way. Your "rule by feelings" is sending this nation over the cliff.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px;" /><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/02/27/Donna-Brazile-Why-did-my-health-care-premiums-go-up" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px; line-height: 15.454545021057129px; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/02/27/Donna-Brazile-Why-did-my-health-care-premiums-go-up</a><br />
<br />Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-32620928604889186682013-02-23T17:42:00.003-07:002013-02-23T17:42:56.901-07:00Today's Degenerate Politics<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Law may properly intervene only where one's actions harm another person, without their voluntary consent.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Government is not about any <b>particular</b> morality. It should be about banning force in human relationships so that all individuals may operate under whatever moral choices they think best. Almost all choices are moral because almost all choices affect our long-term lives, happiness and survival in some way. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">By guaranteeing each person the freedom to pursue their own goals in any way they want (absent force) we will evolve as a society much more quickly than if a thug or gang forces everyone to live according to their particular choices - because we will see more quickly what works and what doesn't. And more fundamentally, we will live as *men* with our minds - instead of as animals do, by brute force.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;"><br />Our experiment in freedom has devolved into two rival gangs constantly vying to control government's power in order to restrict the freedom of choice of others.<br /><br />Those of us in the Liberty movement must explicitly and loudly identify this fact, and explain to everyone who will listen how it's up to them whether they want to have a civilized society of persuasion, or a barbaric society of force.<br />about a minute ago · Like<br /><br />Everyone is entitled their opinion. But you are not entitled to force that opinion upon others, through law, coercion, threats, or force.<br /><br />So conservatives, this means you. Stop trying to control what adults can do in their own homes. Stop trying to insert your religion into government. Stop trying to punish people for behavior that is none of your business.<br /><br />And liberals - this means you, too. Stop telling me how to run my business. Stop telling me what products I can make, how much I can sell them for, how I structure them, or who I sell them to. Stop it.<br /><br />Stop arguing over who gets to hold the gun. Stop arguing over who gets to control the lives of others. NEITHER of you have any right to control the lives of others. Period.</span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-30900404416757404512013-01-27T11:59:00.001-07:002013-01-27T11:59:55.092-07:00Science is a process.<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Science is a process, not a result. It is in particular a process of epistemology - it's a means of obtaining and verifying knowledge.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Anyone who is wed to a theory as opposed to the facts is not a scientist.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">I've been watching Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" and there is a great episode about Johannes Kepler.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;"><br />You see, Kepler's original theory was that the planets travel around the sun in perfect circles nested in perfect solids nested in other perfect circles and so on.<br /><br />Kepler spent many long, frustrating years trying to match his theory to the data, but he couldn't make it work.<br /><br />At one point, he decided the data he had on hand was flawed, so he sought out Tycho Brahe who had the best data on the motions of the planets.<br /><br />Even with Brahe's excellent data, Kepler couldn't make his theory work.<br /><br />So at long last, he gave up his theory. And in doing so, he was able to make a great scientific achievement - the first laws of planetary motion. You see, the planets travel around the sun in ellipses and only by a strict adherence to the *facts* (i.e., Brahe's data) was Kepler able to discard his error and develop the correct theory.<br /><br />Now, of course it remained later for Newton to develop a theory of gravity, and for Einstein to refine it. Does this mean Kepler's ultimate theory was wrong? No. We would say it was correct in the context of his knowledge but incomplete. Kepler's laws of planetary motion are still largely correct - inside a certain error range.<br /><br />Correct knowledge is *never* proven wrong later - because if you're right, your idea corresponds to reality. Reality is what it is. Your idea may be refined, enhanced, but at core it reflects something fundamental about the universe.<br /><br />And that's how we have had five hundred years of continuous scientific progress, building in this way on prior discoveries.<br /><br />It pains me to hear of modern "scientists" doctoring data to fit their theories, as appears to happen regularly in the "global warming" research community. These people aren't scientists - they're priests, erasing uncomfortable facts that contradict their precious religious dogma.</span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-17549071112398016332013-01-12T14:34:00.003-07:002013-01-12T14:34:54.937-07:00Murder in the USIn 2011, I calculate the overall US murder rate as 4.6 per 100,000 population.<br />
<br />
But if you recalculate this, and assumed that black men murdered at the
same rate as everyone else, the overall rate would drop to 1.9 out of
100,000 population. That would give the United States the 147th highest
murder rate in the world - or, the 60th best.<br />
<br />
The insane disproportionate murder rate among US blacks is why the overall US murder rate seems so high.<br />
<br />
I don't understand why liberals refuse to talk about this. I don't
understand why blacks refuse to talk about this. Blacks are just as
often the victim as the offender - <b>almost SIXTY PERCENT</b> of murder
victims in the US are black. Shouldn't they care about this? Where are
Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to talk about this? Yet they are silent.<br />
<br />
And it's not like this is any secret. This culture of violence, abuse of
women, and plain thuggery is paraded around daily in pop music. It's
glorified on TV shows like "The Wire". It's in our faces every day. And
yet we evade it.<br />
<br />
And most of this goes on in <i>cities where guns are already illegal</i>.<br />
<br />
The bottom line here is that ownership of guns by the vast majority of the American public leads to <i>absolutely no discernible difference in murder rate between the US and the other Western countries</i>.
The *entire* difference in total murder rate between the US and Europe
is explained by a single, small sub-culture that glorifies violence and
lives and dies by the gun.<br />
<br />
I know, most liberals reading this have already covered their ears and
are screaming "racist! racist!" to avoid having to face these facts. But
this isn't about race. Most blacks in the US don't live this way. If
you went back to the 1920s and 1930s and did this same math, the gang violence would be by and against Europeans. The gangster culture did not
start with inner-city blacks, but that is certainly where it thrives
today.<br />
<br />
This isn't about some random whack job being able to kill kids in a
school. That's 100 deaths a year max. Tragic, yes, but absolutely
nothing compared to the everyday, out of control slaughter in the
"gangsta" culture. (And taking eveyone's guns away only gives us no defense against these random acts - or against garden variety thugs.)<br />
<br />
Unless we are willing to face these facts, unless we are prepared to
stand up to this anti-life culture, no bleeding-heart gun ban is going
to do one single thing about the US murder rate.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr">http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr</a><br />
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate</a><br />
<br />Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-10913129681714392792013-01-07T12:07:00.000-07:002013-01-07T12:07:19.754-07:00Krugman: We can just print money to solve our problems<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUUSXmtzGSx5vCLoyk1IfpPBenLeIzsznKJZJ3QYqFh7ZcIbmHuZST7GTy5jxSZvIgqVxYT6eCvWvWdrcLyQdw56gJMeSnVnzn3GDdO7gHg-FpnBL3ZzQ_q-VnKo-EvcPrHiV9pQ/s1600/dinar11.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUUSXmtzGSx5vCLoyk1IfpPBenLeIzsznKJZJ3QYqFh7ZcIbmHuZST7GTy5jxSZvIgqVxYT6eCvWvWdrcLyQdw56gJMeSnVnzn3GDdO7gHg-FpnBL3ZzQ_q-VnKo-EvcPrHiV9pQ/s400/dinar11.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Seriously. I shit you not.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/">http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/be-ready-to-mint-that-coin/</a><br />
<br />
The bill above is from a period of Yugoslavian hyperinflation in 1993-1994.<br />
<br />
But Paul Krugman is arguing Obama can "sidestep" the debt ceiling negotiation by simply printing a trillion dollars.<br />
<br />
It's nice that Krugman hasn't given up his childhood belief in magic. But in the real world of grown-ups, such thinking is dangerous.<br />
<br />Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-9536127709938187462013-01-06T16:31:00.000-07:002013-01-06T16:31:16.236-07:00The Solution to Federal Spending - Tax the Rich!<br />
Federal Spending has increased by $1 Trillion a year since Obama took office.<br />
<br />
These are big, absurd numbers that bear no relation to most people's daily lives. So let's put it into perspective.<br />
<br />
$1 Trillion, is a million millions.<br />
<br />
There are 300 million people in the US. Only about half of those, 155 million, are employed.<br />
<br />
One trillion divided by 155 million (i.e., each working person's share of the increased government spending) is $6,451. Per year, per working person.<br />
<br />
So if you are a typical family with two wage earners, your family's share of just the *increase* in Federal spending since Obama took office is $12,903. Per year.<br />
<br />
But the total Federal budget is actually $3.7 Trillion. Your family's share of the total Federal Budget is $47,741. Per year.<br />
<br />
Now let's take a look at soaking the rich. (You know you want to.)<br />
<br />
In 2011, about 6 million Americans made more than $200,000 in income that year. (1)<br />
<br />
Let's make them pay for everything!<br />
<br />
How much would they have to pay just to make up the $1 Trillion per year increase we've had under Obama? $166,000 per year.<br />
<br />
How much would they have to pay to pay for all Federal Spending? $616,000.<br />
<br />
So there you have it - problem solved! All we have to do to get free big government for all of America's "poor" is to make people earning $200,000 a year pay $616,000 a year in income taxes!<br />
While I say this jokingly, the whole left-wing sales pitch is to trick people into thinking they can get whatever they want paid for by "the rich".The fact is, the poor and middle class bear the burden of the enormous government we have, because "the rich" don't remotely have the money to pay for a government that will take 45% of everything Americans produce this year.You go, "But I see my paycheck! My income taxes aren't that high!"<br />
<br />
No indeed, they're not. Because the rest of the taxes that you pay are baked into prices. The price of bread. The price of gasoline. The price of medical care. Taxes on business and on the investments of "the rich" are simply passed through to the consumer, just like other business expenses like rent and electricity.OK, forget income taxes. Raising taxes on capital, surely THAT soaks the rich? Nope. Taxes on capital simply raise the cost of capital to business. Which is passed on to consumers just like every other expense.OK, forget business at all! Just directly tax the wealth of the rich! America's richest man, Warren Buffet, is worth about $50 Billion. That will pay for approximately five days of Federal government. And after you've eaten Warren Buffet, I guess you're pretty much screwed.<br />
<br />
The Big Lie that you leftwingers have been tricked into believing, is that "the rich" can pay for all the freebies you want government to shower on you.The reality is that this simply is not possible. So what happens is that YOU pay for all this government - which impoverishes you - and then government gives some of it back to you, making government seem like God to you - to ensure that you continue to vote for the Big Government politicians.They are bribing you with your own money, and tricking you into thinking the money is coming from others, when in fact it's coming from you. And since a huge part of this spending is with borrowed money, you and your children are actually actively being sold into economic slavery by the leftwing politicians you love.Why do you think middle class real income is down even though productivity continues to improve every year? Where is all that new wealth going?To the government you love so much. <br />
<br />
1. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2012/0710/Obama-tax-proposal-Who-makes-more-than-250k-and-are-they-rich-videoPubliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-76698536115098125932012-12-21T16:34:00.002-07:002012-12-21T16:36:37.701-07:00Death rates: Britain's Health System more dangerous than America's Guns<br />
So, the socialists love British socialized health care and the British ban on guns.<br />
<br />
So let's see what that means in reality eh?<br />
<br />
In 2010:<br />
UK: 157275 cancer deaths<br />
UK cancer death rate: .2489%<br />
<br />
US: 569490 cancer deaths<br />
US cancer death rate: .1844%<br />
<br />
The US has a dramatically lower death rate from cancer, because the US (somewhat) private health care system does a better job of treating, managing, and curing cancer than does the British system.<br />
<br />
If the UK had America's superior cancer death rate, that is 40,734 more Britons who would have survived 2010. That's a 0.06% rate of death by socialized medicine.<br />
<br />
Compare to the roughly 16,000 Americans who were murdered by a firearm - a 0.005% chance.<br />
<br />
So, the British are 10 times more likely to die of socialized medicine, than an American is of a gunshot.<br />
<br />
<br />
http://www.cancer.org/acs/groups/content/@nho/documents/document/acspc-024113.pdf<br />
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/cancerstats/mortality/uk-cancer-mortality-statisticsPubliushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-70669935247256008802012-12-18T09:30:00.001-07:002012-12-18T09:30:16.720-07:00The one thing that could help.<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">Megan, you overlooked one obvious thing that could help. </span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">More regular, sane, well-adjusted people who are well trained in the use of firearms should be allowed to carry them concealed, in public.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">The reason the shooters pick malls, schools, restaurants and the like is that they know noone in any of these places will offer them any resistance. Because we have in our "wisdom" banned guns from these places - even by non-crazies. So when crazy shows up to a school there is *no way to stop it*.</span><br />
<div class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; display: inline; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.800000190734863px; line-height: 13.600000381469727px;">
<br />The meme is "Noone has ever committed a mass murder at a gun show." But it's truth. These shooters are, fundamentally, cowards. They want easy victims, and as you say, a sense of power. So they're going to go to places where we have banned guns and know they will get to exercise that power without resistance. Places that might resist won't give them the sense of power.<br /><br />The obvious solution you overlook, is to encourage, educate, and allow more people to defend themselves in public with firearms. This actually occurs every day in this country, regular people stop crimes and cut short possible shooting sprees with concealed carry weapons - but we don't allow this in schools. One or two teachers with a weapon at Newtown could have cut short the Newtown spree before so many were killed.<br /><br />You are quick to blame the gun, but then ignore the fact that is your own fear of guns and your own policies that have turned schools into killing zones with no defenses.<br /><br />If you acknowledge evil, but then prohibit people from defending themselves from it, you're part of the problem.<br /><br />Just for once, I'd like a liberal to admit one of their policy ideas was stupid and to change their mind. But I suppose I'll grow old and die before that happens.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/17/there-s-little-we-can-do-to-prevent-another-massacre.html" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: initial;" target="_blank">http://www.thedailybeast.com/<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break" style="display: inline-block;"></span>articles/2012/12/17/<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break" style="display: inline-block;"></span>there-s-little-we-can-do-to-pre<wbr></wbr><span class="word_break" style="display: inline-block;"></span>vent-another-massacre.html</a></div>
Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-37677742812995221742012-12-09T11:21:00.000-07:002012-12-09T11:41:13.504-07:00Liberal Nicholas D Kristof starts to get it - a little: Welfare Destroys.<br />
Whoa. Occasionally we get through to people, even if only partially:<br />
<br />
"This is painful for a liberal to admit, but conservatives have a point when they suggest that America’s safety net can sometimes entangle people in a soul-crushing dependency. Our poverty programs do rescue many people, but other times they backfire."<br />
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@Nicholas D Kristof, this is because you leftists have had poverty wrong all along. Poverty is the state of nature. In our nation, poverty is not victimhood. Poverty is not a state you are kept in by a feudal lord. Poverty is, merely, the lack of wealth-producing and wealth-building activity. To create and build wealth, certain values are required: industriousness, foresight, independence, integrity, honesty, the ability to consider the values of other so that you can deal with them by trade, and above all: rationality, the ability to solve problems, because solving problems is what creates value.<br />
<br />
All humans are born into poverty. We are all born with no ideas, with no wealth, without even the ability to walk. We have to learn everything we need to survive and thrive. It's all about having the right *ideas*. Poverty is not others failing you - systemic poverty is YOU failing you. Most people in America learn the values needed to escape poverty. We benefit from the experience of our parents, learn from their mistakes. Even those born to parents who don't know what they're doing, they have the capacity to learn the ideas necessary to escape their plight - as many do.<br />
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But what you liberals try to teach them is it's not your fault, ideas don't matter, all ideas and all culture are the same, you suffer because some evil rich guy is putting the screws to you, that this is what keeps you down, that there is nothing you can do to help yourself, so here, have some of this other guy's money. This is what passes for "compassion" from liberals, this attack on the very souls of the poor, undercutting their humanity, their reason, by teaching them that their reason is impotent and that they are helpless victims.<br />
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If you liberals truly care about the plight of the poor and not merely your own power or your own self-righteousness, you will help figure out how to teach "the poor" the values that matter, the ideas, principles and morality that will lead them out of poverty on their own two feet.<br />
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To do that will require that YOU put aside your erroneous beliefs in moral relativism, in victimhood, and in using government force to mold people and to take other's money for your cause. Because these three ideas which are the core of your philosophy are WRONG and are what creates the sickening dependency and rot you talk about in your article.<br />
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Government force fixes nothing, it merely redistributes the pain and suffering from your bad ideas to others. Preaching victimhood causes you to believe all your problems are from an external source and to never question your own values, to never consider that your own ideas may be the cause of your misery. And moral relativism - not all ideas are equal. Ideas are true or false, are moral, by comparison to reality, to the facts of human existence, to the truths of human nature.<br />
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Of course, the admission of error by Kristof here is undercut by his smear at "profit". What the parents in this article are doing is not profiting, it is looting. But I'll take what I can get.<br />
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<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?ref=opinion&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/kristof-profiting-from-a-childs-illiteracy.html?ref=opinion&_r=0</a>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-7450761005510118052012-11-29T16:56:00.002-07:002012-11-29T16:58:04.843-07:00What "Illegal Immigration" is really all about.<h5 class="uiStreamMessage userContentWrapper" data-ft="{"type":1,"tn":"K"}">
<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span class="messageBody" data-ft="{"type":3}"><span class="userContent">A
Colorado Republican argued against open immigration by saying "America
is a nation of immigrants AND a nation of laws. We are a sovereign
nation with a right to control our borders."<br /> <br /> My response:<br /> <br />
"We are a nation of laws AND a nation of street-crossers! Of course we
like and appreciate street-crossers, we're all where we are because our
forebears crossed a street!"<br /> <br /> "But we need some regulation of this street-crossing or all would be chaos!"<br /> <br />
"So, here, fill out these 25 forms. You don't understand them? Don't
worry, if you make a mistake we'll let you know but you will have to go
back to the end of the line. Oh, yes, you can hire a few attorneys to
help you. And, we don't want chaos, so we only allow 10,000 people a
year to cross the street. We expect your wait to only be five to ten
years. But after that, we will be happy to allow you to cross the
street! You say your house burned down and you're trying to cross the
street in order to move into a new apartment? Well, we all have
problems, but remember, we are a nation of laws! Are you some kind of
criminal rabble, you don't respect our laws and our process? Wait your
turn!!"<br /> <br /> "And once you get your permission to cross the street,
would you be so kind as to cross the street down there at that entry
point 20 miles down the road? Thanks!"<br /> <br /> With laws like
that - and these are not really exaggerations - any rational person
would expect the average joe to jaywalk, all day, every day.<br /> <br /> And that is "illegal immigration" in a nutshell.</span></span></span></span></h5>
Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-11159648197426903162012-07-03T22:08:00.002-06:002017-07-26T23:10:12.026-06:00The Risk-Free Existence<br />
The moral decay of our once great nation is not about parties. It arises from the fantasy that we can eliminate all risk from life.<br />
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While eliminating risk is what everyone wants to do, and what everyone works to do, it has its limits. We can save, and invest - but the bank could fold, the business could bankrupt, the jar of gold coins could be stolen. These failures can be because of bad luck, or bad choices.<br />
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We can go to school to try to learn the right things, we can buy insurance, we can be careful about what we hedge and what we risk. But all life is risk - every single day you might trip, have a heart attack, be hit by a bus, get robbed at gunpoint and shot dead. You cannot plan all risk out of life, and trying to do so causes us to commit grave injustices against others and to make everyone profoundly unhappy.<br />
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The only truly risk-free life would be, disembodied brains, encased in layers of steel and concrete, somehow fed by a source similarly protected from the outside - protected from every conceivable threat. But what kind of life is that?<br />
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A life without risk, is a life without the joy of success. It is a life without the possibility of happiness - for happiness is not sitting plugged into a machine, encased in concrete, protected from everything. Happiness is achievement of your goals. The very idea of a goal, presumes risk - risk that you may fail.<br />
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To some, making life's decisions is scary. It is risky. They seek to eliminate this risk by having others make their choices for them. They delegate making their choices to their parents, to their teachers, to their spouse, to their Union Boss, to their political leaders, to their religion. They don't want to have to choose; if they have to choose they might fail.<br />
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Why is failure so hard for people? Nobody wants to be a loser. But so what, big deal! Put it in perspective. If you're not dead, count your blessings - you are already a hundred times better off than almost every one of your ancestors. But perspective is precisely what we lack.<br />
<br />
This fear of failure is so great, this desire to eliminate risk so powerful, that our nation has now instituted laws so that everyone can be a winner. No business need bankrupt, we'll bail you out! Noone need do menial work, everyone can go to college and be an intellectual! No homeowner need default on a loan, the government will make the bank eat it!<br />
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Our savings are not enough security, so we make the government guarantee them. That guarantee is not enough so we buy insurance, but that is not enough so we make the government guarantee THAT and make it so that we can never lose it. But that is not enough - and if someone could make a machine to actually suck the life force out of others and put it in to you, we would demand that the government use it to redistribute life itself.<br />
<br />
But all this does is make other people bear the consequences for your failure. It doesn't eliminate it. It just makes you think you didn't fail. It protects you from the reality of your bad decisions. It protects you from having to feel bad - at the cost of making others suffer for your mistakes, or for your bad luck. What gives you the right to punish others to protect you from your own choices, from your own feelings?<br />
<br />
And so what? What's the big deal anyway? Grownups have feelings - grownups deal with them. Grownups make mistakes - grownups learn from them. Humans alone among animals have the unique capacity for reason which lets us truly choose, and truly learn.<br />
<br />
It is only children and the mentally damaged who cannot deal with their emotions, and who can not learn from their mistakes. Who refuse to learn from their mistakes, who instead insist on living in a fantasy that is not the real world, a fantasy universe created and sustained on the toiling backs of others. Parenting is supposed to prepare children for the real world, to provide an environment they can survive in long enough to reach maturity, to make their own life choices. But something happened over the past 50 years, perverting that safe harbor into something that they now expect to last their entire lives. Everyone is now their parents, millions of them - we now need never grow up, because the law makes these others take care of us.<br />
<br />
We have become a nation of children, trying to each live in a risk-free concrete bubble, trying desperately to avoid having to correct the mistakes we make, or even to feel anything bad at all. For these, freedom is freedom from having to make the choices of life.<br />
<br />
Whatever the hell that is, it's not human. A life chosen by others, protected by others, guaranteed by others, is not your life.Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-85047319212503436592012-06-04T22:25:00.003-06:002012-06-05T00:09:40.215-06:00Michael Bloomberg<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
I don't normally do photos on here. <b>But I had to.</b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipFU3SoqtCs_SJLPKuFoTL3MNL6V6NmS1dqnw2Q-zrchlhVkC5ANtYbcpptVdy0prwG-6wpgcF0CmbRj5Ur8RaJbLlw872f6nHkHDBFIoBhKOFmmhGi08E0JPmhvgNRsvBQGjJOQ/s1600/MichaelBloomberg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipFU3SoqtCs_SJLPKuFoTL3MNL6V6NmS1dqnw2Q-zrchlhVkC5ANtYbcpptVdy0prwG-6wpgcF0CmbRj5Ur8RaJbLlw872f6nHkHDBFIoBhKOFmmhGi08E0JPmhvgNRsvBQGjJOQ/s1600/MichaelBloomberg.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-1340573207160912452011-10-05T20:28:00.000-06:002012-06-05T00:05:40.885-06:00Corporations - To Do Big Things, you need Big Money<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">To do big things, you need big money and a lot of people. There are fundamentally only two ways to accumulate big money and a lot of people: voluntarily, or involuntarily.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">In the voluntary column, you have say Apple. It has accumulated some $80 Billion now through the efforts of its tens of thousands of employees, investors, and executives. It uses that money to invest in great new technology. Big innovations often require big money. Apple spends tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, and the efforts of thousands of people to bring new products to market. It has earned all the money to do that, through voluntary, mutually beneficial relationships.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">In the involuntary column, when the pharoahs built the pyramids, it was done by slaves, under the whip, worked to death with no choice in the matter.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Both "big" projects (the iPad, and the Pyramid) required lots of money and lots of people. But one was voluntary, the other involuntary. One was created through a nexus of the free choice of every participant; the other built from slave labor and coercion.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">So, human beings want to do big things. It's part of our nature. Which type of society do you then want? Voluntary - or involuntary. Free, or slave? There really is no middle ground.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">A corporation that unwisely invests its money, loses it. Through expenses - such as payroll, utilities, rent. While the people who receive these payments may benefit, they do so only for a limited time. It is not a self-sustaining social organization, it costs more to do this work (such as the debacle at Solyndra) than it generates, and it eats and consumes the human lives engaged in it. Continued against sanity, it would end in starvation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">A corporation that wisely invests its money generates ongoing returns. Those same beneficiaries will benefit for the long term. And the corporation generates profit, which can be used to invest in new ventures, generating even more economic growth, more employment, more value for everyone.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">This is the difference between the government's recent "stimulus" efforts - which unthinkingly threw money at unsustainable businesses - and the work of (for example) Apple, which not only continues to grow, continues to employ more people, continues to produce more products, continues to produce more profits - not a dime of which was given to it coercively through taxation.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Since government handouts are often assigned on the basis of political favor and not true long-term economic benefit, ask yourself again: what kind of society do you want? Voluntary, or involuntary?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Government cronyism and wasted billions is the result of involuntary big things.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Corporations in a free market will produce voluntary big things.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px;">Before you protest and attack corporations, be sure that you know what it is a corporation is, and how it works.</span></div>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-14154892815138887952011-10-05T20:27:00.000-06:002011-10-05T20:28:29.967-06:00What is a Corporation, Anyway?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 16px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">With all of the little neo-hippies on Wall Street (and the President) bashing "greedy corporations", holding signs that say "A corporation is not a person", perhaps we should take a little detour from our political path to discuss what, precisely, is a corporation?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Indeed, a corporation is not "a person". That is obvious to even dullards such as the Occupy Wall Street crowd.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">A corporation is a nexus of a number of people organized around a common goal. It is a type of social organization that provides incredible benefits to civilization.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Corporations align the interests of:</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> owners/shareholders/investors</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> workers</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> customers</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Of course, the purpose of a corporation is to produce a profit for its owners. There, I said it. PROFIT. Profit is not evil, profit is not "exploitation". Profit is a goal of all rational, productive activity. Without profit, you are toiling in order to live hand to mouth, on a day to day basis. To profit is to produce more than your immediate needs - in a durable way that can be used in the future (this is one of the functions of money). Profitless civilizations are those that live in squalor, constantly on the edge of starvation. Every single person who works, does so to profit. You earn more than you spend, in order to save, so that you can buy a car, buy a house, send your children to school, to be able to continue to eat should you become injured; or just to retire. Profit is how we provide for uncertainties in the future. Profit is not evil; profit is one of the highest and noblest goods, it is one of the great achievements of our civilization. To accumulate wealth is to make your life easier, safer, more pleasurable.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">But while that is the goal of the owners of the corporation, in order to profit, they must take reality into account. That reality is that in order to do big things, they need help. In addition to capital and vision, you need artisans, engineers, line workers, drivers, accountants, and marketing.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">The beauty of capitalism - true capitalism, unfettered by government cronies, special favors or special restrictions - is that it is entirely voluntary. Noone forces you to buy an iPad - Steve Jobs isn't standing behind you with a gun. You voluntarily give Apple your cash because <strong>the iPad is worth more to you than the cash</strong>. You profit in every voluntary trade you make in such a society. In these trades, your profit is not measured in cash - it might be measured in productivity, in being able to do things you couldn't do before - but it is real nonetheless.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Similarly, the help the owners need - the corporation's employees - work through their voluntary agreement, which they decide on a daily basis. There are no slaves in corporate America, the socialist claptrap about "wage slaves" notwithstanding.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">All these parties come together through this nexus, the corporation, trading cash, capital, labor and production, in order to achieve the things all these various parties want. It is a win-win-win scenario. There are no "exploited". Everyone who trades voluntarily through the nexus of a corporation profits, or by definition they <strong>wouldn't</strong>. Anyone who doesn't think they are getting a fair deal may trade with someone else. Think the iPad is too expensive? Buy any of dozens of Android tablets. Boss is a jerk? Get a different job - or start your own company. Or go whine on Wall Street if you think that will get you anywhere (it won't).</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">It's important to identify this essential nature of a corporation - as a voluntary assemblage of people. A corporation is not a person. It is, however, *people*. A group of people.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Just because some people choose to work together for a common goal, doesn't mean they magically lose their freedoms - their right to property, their right to speak their mind. Some would have it that corporations cannot put a political ad on TV discussing a topic that is important to them. But remember: a corporation is just a group of people. If you ban a corporation from political speech, you are saying that *this particular group of people is not entitled to its political speech*. That is no different than saying "We don't think blacks should be able to put political ads on TV".</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">It also doesn't mean that this group of people we call a corporation has special rights that individuals don't. They should not (though they sometimes do) get special tax breaks, special legislation, special treatment under the law. But in true capitalism, such would not occur. A corporation would have no more -- and no less -- rights than any individual. It would have exactly the same rights as its members - to speak, to trade, to profit, because a corporation is merely some people <strong>doing these things together.</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">In short - if I have a right to speak, I have a right to speak <strong>in partnership with someone else.</strong> The Constitution guarantees the right to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. We have the right to <strong>do these things together.</strong></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">Now of course, corporations do not vote. Voting is not a fundamental human right in the same way that my life, liberty and property are. It is ok to deny this "civil right" (which is to say, a privilege in the construction of a particular government) to the paper entities which are corporations. And I don't think anyone has suggested otherwise.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">But allowing people to form corporations *specifically* for the purpose of raising money to spread their political ideas - this levels the playing field in the marketplace of ideas. Imagine a company formed to solicit $20 donations from millions of people, just in order to put ads on TV to support their political ideas. You might call such a corporation.. MoveOn.Org. Or the AFLCIO. Except that MoveOn.org and the AFLCIO oppose your right to do the same thing they're doing. They don't like the competition, and hope to use the government's power to *force you to be silent*. They are huge outfits that spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Before the Citizens United court ruling, you had no chance to go up against them. Or even to go up against any bogeyman "big corporation" you don't like. But now, you can.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; "> </p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 11px; line-height: 1.5em; ">So, in a very narrow sense the Occupy Wall Street hippies are right. A corporation is not "a person". But it <strong>is</strong> people, who have the same rights together that they do apart. It is precisely collective exercise of individual rights that gave power to Ghandi, the US civil rights movement in the south, the anti-slavery movements in the 1800s. Keep that in mind the next time you think it's ok to muzzle "corporations".</p></span>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-7074383440297283222010-07-30T23:14:00.004-06:002010-07-30T23:27:36.427-06:00The Moral Inversions of Barack ObamaThe purpose of government is to protect our rights, our individual liberty. Yet Barack Obama has turned our government into a tool to destroy the very concepts of individuals, rights, and morality.<br /><br />Wall Street Bailout - companies that recklessly gambled with financial instruments they didn't understand, were rewarded with hundreds of billions of dollars of bailouts. Banks that were responsible and did not have problems, were forced to take government money and be subjected to government control anyway, and paid a price for bailout money that they didn't need.<br /><br />States bailout - left-wing states such as California and Illinois which boast large welfare apparatus and progressive taxation, are the hardest-hit by the recession because their tax structures are set up to punish the wealthy, and in a recession the wealthiest are the ones who get hit the hardest. In California, the powerful public employees unions have engineered outrageous pensions and salary increases, while around them the economy crumbles. A large part of the Federal bailouts went to states like California, in effect, rewarding these unions and state legislatures for their economic irrationality. And of course the ones being forced to pay for the irrational state bailouts, are those states that have carefully managed their budgets.<br /><br />GM - rewarded the UAW and GM management whose greed and poor product and marketing decisions led the company to bankruptcy. Punished Americans through higher taxes, who purchased cars from responsible companies. $50B taxpayer dollars later, they have produced all of 10,000 'Volt's, a $41,000 electric car that can go all of 40 miles. But they sure succeeded in buying the votes of a lot of UAW cronies for the Democrats.<br /><br />Homeowner bailouts - The government planned on spending $75 Billion to reward people who irresponsibly bought homes they couldn't afford, and punished through taxation, those who lived within their means. Those who have scrupulously managed their personal budgets, and not squandered their money, in order to be sure they could always make their mortgage payments -- these people's children will now pick up the tab for all the people who did not act responsibly.<br /><br />Gulf oil spill - The government's response to the BP Gulf oil spill, was to institute a moratorium on new drilling - to punish everyone who DIDN'T make a mistake, who DIDN'T spill a drop of oil, costing tens of thousands in the Gulf region their jobs.<div><br />Cap-and-Trade: companies which produce oil - which runs our cars and trucks, heats homes, is the source of plastics, clothing, life-saving pharmaseuticals - are evil. They are to be prevented from creating this incredible value (considered evil by Obama) by forcing them to buy the right to exist from Al Gore's "cap and trade exchange". This would net Al Gore and his cronies billions of dollars for doing nothing, while costing Americans a massive cost of living increase.<br /><br />Health care bill - the key element of the health care bill is the new regulation that requires insurance companies to provide insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions. In other words, a person can fail to take care of their own health, wait until they are sick to get insurance, in effect forcing other people to pay for their lack of attention to their own body. Those who mind their health and take responsibility for their weight and nutrition, pay extra to cover emergency treatment for those who are fat, don't eat right, and smoke.<br /><br />The whole shebang - all told, Obama is saddling future generations with many, many trillions of dollars in debt. This is the greatest moral inversion of all, saddling the unborn, oppressing future generations with the yoke of OUR irresponsibility and OUR immorality. They are the ones who will pay the price, in a seriously weakened economy, in a degenerate country which will make Greece look like a day in the park. Our children will work their whole lives to repay what Barack Obama is doing in these few short years, they will profit not from their own lives, and they will suffer from a significantly diminished standard of living.<br /><br />The pattern of behavior exhibited by Obama's government is one of consistently rewarding the unjust, and punishing the just. Giving money to those proven to squander it, while taking it from those who have earned and saved it. From those according to their ability, to those according to their immorality.<br /><br />Yes, I'm going to use the word again: immoral. <b>A person who expects others to pay for his mistakes, is immoral. A person who expects others to fulfill her irrational wishes to live beyond her means, is immoral.</b> There is no other word for it. And Barack Obama, the 21st century's biggest cheerleader for Socialism, is enabling this kind of twisted, topsy-turvy immoral thinking on a vast scale never before seen in America, when even the European Socialist states are beginning to fail and back away from the idea of the State as God and Provider of All Things.<br /><br />But this is precisely the defining characteristic of Socialism. It is by design, and it is intended to utterly destroy the very concept of individuality. For what can be more individual than a human being acting according to standards of good or evil and to be judged accordingly? But people with a moral center are not people that are easily turned into cogs in the Socialist state's machinery. To create the mentally impotent robots that Socialism requires, morality must be redefined to be state-centered instead of based on the individual. The moral inversions of Barack Obama are precisely intended to destroy morality, to destroy an individual's incentive to rise or fall on their own effort, to turn everyone into a dependent of the state, to make everyone a slave of everyone else. That is the "equality" of Socialism.</div><div><br />To save ourselves and our children and grandchildren, to save our very <i>souls</i>, we must end this!<br /></div>Publiushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13626396216546965944noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13095888.post-709755762420779372010-07-27T12:56:00.003-06:002012-06-05T00:08:56.744-06:00Liberals who proclaim the goodness of taxes continue to dodge them<div>
The illustrious John Kerry, loser in the 2004 Presidential election, is one of the leftists who constantly proclaim bromides such as "the rich are getting richer", "the rich should pay their fair share", etc. Kerry is among the most liberal of Senators, and any time a question of tax cuts versus tax increases comes up, Kerry has always voted for tax increases.</div>
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Yet, he is harboring his new $7M yacht (guardian of the proletariat that he is) in Rhode Island - in order to dodge massive taxes on such property in Taxachusetts, er, Massachusetts.</div>
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Kerry's dodge will save him nearly $500,000 plus $70,000 a year in taxes on the yacht.</div>
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<a href="http://wbztv.com/local/john.kerry.yacht.2.1825558.html">http://wbztv.com/local/john.kerry.yacht.2.1825558.html</a></div>
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Kerry's comment: "I have nothing more to say."</div>
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It's a good thing that Kerry is fighting for the common man - by raising taxes on the most evil segment of our society, diabetics and disabled people, against whom he voted to sock an excise tax on medical devices. The disabled, diabetics, and people who need pacemakers will see the costs of these devices increase by over ***<b>$4 Billion a year</b>***.</div>
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Yet Kerry, who is married to a woman worth hundreds of millions of dollars, thinks it's ok for himself to dodge a $500,000 tax bill on his luxury item.</div>
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In the dictionary, the word hypocrite ought to have a picture of this guy next to it. Along with tax cheat Tim Geithner, tax cheat Charles Rangel, and tax cheat Tom Daschle (all the most liberal of liberals, unsurprisingly).</div>
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1. Massive Excise tax on wheelchairs, pacemakers, insulin pumps part of ObamaCare: </div>
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<a href="http://article.nationalreview.com/412195/obamacares-medical-device-tax/deroy-murdock">http://article.nationalreview.com/412195/obamacares-medical-device-tax/deroy-murdock</a></div>
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