Point/Counterpoint

We've Moved!

2009-08-17T00:47:00.001-07:00

Point/Counterpoint has moved to reasonsjester.blogspot.com

Right Wing Extremist Memo Chills Free Speech

2009-04-14T09:50:00.000-07:00

Homeland Security on guard for 'right-wing extremists'
Returning U.S. military veterans singled out as particular threats

Here is the story with a link to the doc (if it won't open on the webpage, feel free to look around after googling "DHS right wing extremism" and keep trying until you get it to load). It is about 10 pages. Will comment on this later. Have to run....Feel free to add comments.

Towards Non-Parental Government

2009-04-14T04:43:00.000-07:00

The origins of authority are entrenched in mystery. The perquisites of power are, however, well understood and therefore the call to authority has lent itself to diverse justifications throughout history. There is the ultimate authority of death, whose manifestation all "great" religions seek to hijack for their own purposes. There is the wonderment of life and its creation by man in the role of the father; as well as the "religious" legitimation of women's oppressed positions by relinquishing to her the role of a filthy, intrinsically sinful carrier. The man who could transcend the sinful process of a sexually-created birth, and the painful reality of death could appropriate unto himself the authority over men's triumph in life creation and the power over their very deaths.

Historically, we have in most religions the erection of mystical patriarchal authority over the pater familias of a territory intended to be ruled by an unholy alliance of the king, his warriors and the priests. The fear of an omniscient ruler, in the personhood of the king or emperor, or, preferably (for men eventually learn the difficult-to-conceal secret that rulers are mortals like themselves), the king who possesses the divine right to rule, replaces the fear of the natural order and reifies it in a man that can be appeased by their slavish obeisance. If the subjects then carry out their slavishness with enough fidelity, they too can be admitted to the ultimate heaven, where they get the privilege of worshiping at the fountainhead of supreme authority for all eternity.

~~~

The Enlightenment was the harbinger of the destruction of divine right and the return to rule by nature, that is, reality itself. The great iconoclasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not openly abolish religion, for it was the securitor of authority in the minds of the unenlightened. Instead, tributary appeals to "Nature's God" and a "Creator" could draw on the power of the "most rational" Christian Thomas Aquinas, leading to Baruch de Spinoza through Locke leading to the great idol-smashers of Paine and Jefferson, without instantly vanquishing faith.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were to be the rules for man; not the arbitrary rule of men, and certainly not the mystical and often brutally violent Bible. The new authority would derive from reason and the contemplation of elected educated men; not from the amalgamous mobs, and not from the worship of omnipotent, and all-too-absent gods. Christopher Hitchens, when discussing H.L. Mencken's observation that "every man is an atheist as far as gods like Amon Ra, Juno and Pluto are concerned," was certainly astute when he pointed out that "Americans need to go just one more god further to get at the truth..."

The reflections of a Nietzsche in his Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, combined with the implications of the deist Charles Darwin's theories, did not have the idolatry and superstition dispelling effect one would have surmised from the content at the time. Instead, Americans who were confronted with rising secularism rushed to revise the "religious significance" of the founding, and indeed shunned the Founding Fathers' mission of a rational basis for government. They reacted with revivalism, populism, and progressivism. These movements were anti-rationale in content, exuberant and emotional in form, and over the course of more than a century appear to have all-but-destroyed the bases for limited and divided American government.

~~~

Liberty is a tumultuous but vigorous value to adopt in society, but one conducive of providing great men, or men who seek to be great, the freedom to grapple with truth. Thus America's existential crisis is not merely a symptom of a diseased moral state; it is a direct result of the inevitable decay of the ancient traditions of superstition and religion in their war with reason, reality and truth.

Thus it is a call for great men, the John Galts of the world if you would indulge the author, to come forward and reveal the truth of the matter to the easily deceived. Great men, the few who have survived the state's war of attrition, must be moved to act before the state accrues enough power to permanently enslave the nation, even if this 'permanence' is as the words of Ozymandias:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

~~~

The destruction of paternal authority as embodied in the coercive power of the state must not be replaced by maternal authority, which is akin to the program of the left. The proper place for authority in society is in the family, and this must be the authority of reason, not of violence. The child must be raised to seek to understand the world, his abilities, and his opportunities to achieve in it. Those who fail to achieve must rightfully take their place in the market with the common, unskilled jobs; those who strive to excel should and will most often be rewarded.

As far as how government is to enact punishments and rewards in such a state of liberty these are trifold.

First in men's interactions with reality, we must recognize the formulation of the Russian behavioralist Pavlov whose theory of conditioning posits the key feedback mechanism for biological organisms, including men, and is necessary for us to understand our relationship with physical, material reality.

Second, the rule of law centered on individual rights is indispensable. If there is any civic education needed to uphold this system it is that liberty, human dignity, and individuality are inviolate if one wishes to remain an equal member of society.

Third, in men's productive and economic lives, the market as the determinant of value, rooted in exchange and driven as an engine by need and by the potentiality of want in the event of prosperity, the allure of profit as well as the deterrent of failure and ruin, these must be upheld as most consistent with man's nature.

Government cannot and must not interfere with these necessary and natural mechanisms - indeed it must recognize that there is an objective reality and allow men to interact with it and learn from it if there is to be maintained healthy material conditions able to support life in the long-run. This is no small achievement, as the socialist in his folly assumes away and demonstrates his ignorance of, time and time again.

~~~

Thus comes the predictable reaction, and what of charity? Reason indeed cannot destroy man's natural emotions, it can only order them, and assuredly undirected emotions can destroy reason. Thus we need to posit a value that can animate the civic virtues of men.

The requirements of a civil society, as opposed to simply any spontaneous order, must hold out something to animate a vigorous attachment to freedom. This must comes from an appreciation of the beauty of men being allowed to live in freedom; respect for one another's dignity, and the esteem engendered and garnered from providing and attending to mutual respect at a basic level.

This mutual respect is signaled in society through the currently alien concept of manners. Manners may not maketh the man, but they are a display of a society's vitality and a confirmation that mutual respect for one another's rights is actively being preserved. In other words they are a signal to others that we are safe to be ourselves and to interact spontaneously and respectfully. The decline of manners and mutual respect is thus a barometer of the decline of a nation, the sign of what Adam Ferguson might call the impending barbarism of reversion to a "rude nation."

Yet judgment of good and evil, justice and injustice, noble and ignoble must not be subverted by this fundamental civil respect. This requires an education that is attenuated to seeking truth and "the good." Our educational system, to contrast, is centered on its role as an activist arm of a political party, is nihilistic, relativistic, and teaches unreason and "fiction" as philosophy. It is the core of our nation's moral and intellectual rot, and one that must be retaken for all that is good and reasonable in men to be preserved in this nation.

The Taxman Cometh

2009-04-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

By Jasmin Melvin

WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) - As a deep recession strips Americans of their jobs, homes and investments, the 2009 U.S. tax season promises to see a large uptick in first-time delinquent income taxpayers.

"Our calls are up 280 percent," said Richard Boggs, founder and chief executive of Los Angeles-based Nationwide Tax Relief, a firm that helps delinquent taxpayers resolve tax issues.

"We've seen a huge rise in what we call the rookie delinquent taxpayer," he said. "They are incredibly scared, and they have no idea what's going to happen to them because, God bless them, they've never owed before."

As the weak economy puts job security and a steady flow of income on a slippery slope, many are wary of the U.S. tax man, tax consultants say.

With household balance sheets under pressure, more U.S. households are having trouble keeping up with their day-to-day bills and struggling to pay their taxes.

"Folks are not paying their taxes because they are spending it on necessary living expenses," said Kristin Lavieri, an accountant with Weinstein & Anastasio, PC in Hamden, Connecticut.

She added that more of the self-employed, who are required to pay taxes each quarter, are likely to end up with back taxes. "When there is not enough money for general operating expenses, there most definitely isn't going to be enough for quarterly estimates," Lavieri said.

Among those not self-employed, many also have to make tough decisions that could carry long-term financial consequences.

Many withdrew funds from 401k and IRA retirement savings accounts before the permitted time, unaware of the punitive taxes and penalties this would generate, said Larry Walker Jr, president of the financial and tax services firm 4-Serenity Inc in Snellville, Georgia.

Withdrawals from a retirement account before reaching the age of 59.5 are considered taxable income and generally incur an additional tax of 10 percent of the amount.

Other taxpayers did not have enough tax withheld from paychecks. As a result, they now owe taxes or will not receive the amount of refund they usually do, Walker said.

FEAR, SECRECY CAUSE MORE PROBLEMS

"If we are seeing a nearly threefold increase in people who have tax problems who have never had tax issues, it shows that things are worse than people think right now," Boggs said.

But tax woes are such a taboo issue that over 40 percent of Boggs' clients have told him nobody knows about their problems, and that often includes their spouses.

"When they see a tax bill that they know they can't pay, they freeze up," Boggs said. "A very innocent procrastination can get you into a lot of hot water with the IRS."

The Internal Revenue Service, which collects taxes in the United States, vowed to show its gentler side this year.

"We recognize the economic realities that are out there," IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told reporters. "We're available to work with people."

Critics are skeptical this will happen. The agency collects much of the $3 trillion that funds the government.

IRS agents were given more flexibility in their collection actions, including the ability to reduce or suspend monthly payments on back taxes so those hit hard by the financial downturn are not forced to default on their tax payments.

But Boggs said IRS policies are adding to the fear Americans feel for the traditionally secretive agency while outdated guidelines make the prospect of collection action scary.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, head of an independent organization within the IRS that helps taxpayers, seemed to echo this sentiment in an annual report to Congress.

The report revealed that penalty provisions in the tax code have not been comprehensively reformed since 1989, and the complexity of the tax code is a serious problem.

An elderly woman in Austin, Texas, who asked not to be named, said her $3,000 debt to the IRS grew to around $60,000 in taxes and penalties over 16 years despite the fact that she paid off the initial debt within six months.

The 61-year-old is disabled and suffers from multiple health problems. The IRS now takes $133 each month from her Social Security disability check.

The practice is part of the agency's Federal Payment Levy Program, which allows up to 15 percent of any federal payments a delinquent taxpayer receives to go directly to the IRS until their overdue taxes are paid in full.

Olson noted that too often this automated levy system withholds Social Security payments to taxpayers with incomes below the poverty line. If these cases had been subject to human review, the report says, many would have been classified by the agency as unable to pay.

Some wealthier people are also finding themselves overwhelmed by tax burdens. "America's top earners are suffering a new one-two punch," Boggs said.

"Not only are America's wealthiest suffering the largest losses in nearly a century, but the IRS will be seizing what little resources they do have left in record time," he said.

"Some of my rich clients are having big problems," said Lance Wallach, CEO and president of Veba Plan LLC, a financial consultancy firm. "Hundreds of them do not have liquid cash to pay bills." (Editing by Alan Elsner)

Television's Lame Attack on Guns

2009-04-13T15:06:00.000-07:00

by John Lott

When script writers run out of something else to say (e.g., there are only so many times they can say everyone is uninsured and miserable about it), guns and gun makers are easily available to demonize. “Life” and “House” have both gone after guns in recent episodes.

Life’s episode “Initiative 38″ has a fairly unbelievable plot: a woman working on an initiative to ban handguns is murdered and there is one major suspect, P&K, a gun company. Here is some of the dialogue:

Detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis): We are saying that someone came here to kill your wife. Can you think of who that might be?

Harold Amis: Yes, I can. Initiative 38.

Woman who works for Initiative 38: Initiative 38 is a comprehensive ban on handguns. Lisa was working to get it passed.

Detective Seever (Crews’ partner): How comprehensive?

Woman who works for Initiative 38: We were working to take back our streets.

Seever: Getting any push back from the gun companies?

Woman who works for Initiative 38: Getting push back? Ya, there was a lot money coming in against us from the other side. From P&K guns. I didn’t think that they would do this though. Lisa was the face of Initiative 38.

Seever: Lisa Amos is the face of Initiative 38. If that passes, P&K guns gets hit hard.

On the one side, the show notes all the carnage from guns being used to kill people. The only argument offered for guns is that they produce jobs for those who make them and that guns are the one manufactured product left that we can produce cheaper than China.

Of course, there is no mention of defensive gun use and that guns are used to stop crime about 4 to 5 times more frequently than they are used to commit it. No mention that while police are extremely important in stopping crime (indeed, my research shows them to be the single most important factor), the police themselves understand that they virtually always arrive on the crime scene after the crime is committed. Obviously, the question of what victims should do when they are facing a criminal by themselves is ignored.

The notion that gun makers, which are fairly small companies, are going to donate a lot of money to defeat an initiative as the episode suggests is also fairly unbelievable. The donations to defeat such initiatives would tend to be a lot of very small donations from people who care about being able to defend themselves and their families and the principle of self-defense.

“House” often goes after gun ownership. It only mentions people not having health insurance more frequently. In the episode “Simple Explanation,” Kutner (Kal Penn) commits suicide with a gun. There is all the normal dialogue about how he probably bought the gun for self defense and instead used it to commit suicide.

For those interested, the National Academy of Sciences released a 2004 report that comprehensively reviewed academic research studying guns and suicide. The panel set up under the Clinton administration surveyed the extensive literature from public health, economics, and criminology. The Academy concluded that, “Some gun control policies may reduce the number of gun suicides, but they have not yet been shown to reduce the overall risk of suicide in any population.” The point is that there are a lot of ways to commit suicides, and you would pretty much have the same rate of suicide even if guns disappeared tomorrow.

However, I would argue that there isn’t even a lot of evidence that gun bans or gun lock laws reduce gun suicide rates.

Kal Penn was killed off in the show so that he could go work for the Obama administration. It is probably somewhat appropriate that he got killed off in a way that provided a politically correct lesson for viewers.

A Bedtime Story for Our Time

2009-04-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

Can you IMAGINE a world without haughty liberals pretending to be smarter than you because they believe in a self-destructive ideology that has been debunked repeatedly for more the 2500 years? I mean really savor that thought.

You get up in the morning and you go get a newspaper. No stupid liberals telling you to recycle or the world is going to explode, or that the ozone layer is deteriorating, or that killer bees are going to get us if we don't buy smart vehicles - NOTTA!

The libs just one day inexplicably decide to shut the hell up and voluntarily move to their North Korean-style gulag and make Obama dictator for life. They institute their eco-fascist dreams and have ZERO carbon dioxide emissions and thus look darker than a Tahitian village at night (at least in Tahiti they burn tiki torches).

That's it, the libs just one day get up and decide they don't want to fight us or run our lives anymore so they just voluntarily move to their utopian commune - where they are literally starving to death after fifteen years. Obama opens slave labor camps to get people scared enough to work - REALLY work. Then they come to our border begging us, pleading to be let back into "America" and we want to be nice, but after all THEY ARE LOOTERS, so we're not so sure.

We decide to turn them away and tell them to overthrow Obama themselves - but they are too weak, so they live in misery and poverty like the Cubans under Castro - HAPPILY EVER AFTER. THE END.

American Intelligentsia: Arrogant and Willfully Ignorant

2009-04-13T05:45:00.000-07:00

We have perhaps today the most arrogant, ignorant, half-baked, pompous, parroting mental midgets of an intelligentsia in the history of the United States, if not the world. Their cliche-wielding, bromide-chanting, dogma-uttering repetition leads them to take utterly predictable positions and the aura of the left's army of dismissive homogeneous know-it-alls is punctured by the risible premise that they are all fucking geniuses and the founding fathers of this nation and the great men of antiquity were simply rubes who could perceive nothing of the state of humanity.

These intellectuals, as they fancy themselves, come to the conclusion of the obsolescence of the thinkers of the past by a superficial examination of the de facto contexts in which they lived; they see slavery, warfare, and the oppression of minorities, and anyone who lived in such an era, by virtue of its "barbarism" and by virtue of it being the past (except for their ordained prophets, of course) is automatically contaminated. The modern liberals are intellectually unable to isolate the causes and effects of various philosophical positions taken by great thinkers; of what tends toward the good, what toward the evil, and what was not a matter of a philosophical effect on the intellectual culture, which is the only kind of culture these half-assed analysts recognize.

Their arrogance is partially due to their own pedigree, which is a reflection of a degrading materialist relic of nineteenth century "philosophy," and closer to our time, of a totalitarian German historicism combined with the program of conspiratorial neomarxist Gramscianism. The fact that ninety-percent of Americans have no idea what I'm talking about is itself an illustration of those in the education system's refusal to even cite the sources of their own twisted aspirations.

The modern left dismisses the Enlightenment as an impossible and destructive project, yet they refuse to see that the great bulk of progress since that time to now has come from science; including cures for diseases; the creature comforts of civilization that effete liberals all adopt though despise; not to mention in the capitalistic west the shorter working hours, higher standard of living, and greater security despite the grave inefficiencies caused by universalistic social insurance, minimum wages, and labor unions, which tend in an advanced capitalist economy to cause more harm and disruption than good. This of course the modern liberals are emotionally unable to fathom, despite adorning the mantle of "the smartest people on the planet."

They are no more able to assess the good, with their euphemistically labeled "critical reason," than they are able to solve a practical problem of thinking their way out of a wet paper sack; solve a philosophical or theological problem such as answering 'how many angels dance on the head of a pin?" (none silly, angels don't dance); or a serious political philosophical problem, such as "why is there so much mutual animosity among citizens of different philosophical predispositions in the United States?"

The simple answer to the latter is because the modern liberals, or they who call themselves "progressives," have willfully and ignorantly rejected the entire premise of the United States government with their blase dismissal of the system of federalism, and the ingenious Constitutional safeguards designed to prevent our intellectual and cultural colonization and "domination"; their arrogant aggregation of centralized power in the capital; their intention to homogenize the culture, through the universities, the media, and the entertainment industry, with the perverse, paranoiac, inhumane and specious justification that American culture is all a part of the bourgeois capitalist superstructure.

If it turned out these university "men" were the puppets of a foreign adversary intent on destroying the animating spirit of the Republic, one would have to feign surprise.

By crowning themselves with the mantles of "philosopher-kings," the modern liberals have sought to demolish the opportunity for citizens to pursue philosophy themselves, as modestly as they are able to sometimes, and have thus turned our halls of education and corridors of information into vehicles of self-righteous, self-assured activism tantamount to functioning as the propaganda arm of a political party. All of this has nothing to do with the pursuit of truth that is the hallmark of civic education in the Western spirit; it is more akin to the tenth century closing of the doors of interpretation (ijtihad) in Islam than the enlightenment of a noble, self-sufficient citizenry.

This Year's Award for Scorching Satire - For the Eighth Consecutive Year: Ann Coulter!

2009-04-13T02:04:00.000-07:00

The rash of recent shooting incidents has led people who wouldn't know an AK-47 from a paintball gun to issue demands for more restrictions on guns. To be sure, it's hard to find any factor in these shootings that could be responsible -- other than the gun.

So far, this year's public multiple shootings were committed by:

-- Richard Poplawski, 23, product of a broken family, expelled from high school and dishonorably discharged from the Marines, who killed three policemen in Pittsburgh.

-- Former crack addict Jiverly Wong, 41, who told co-workers "America sucks" yet somehow was not offered a job as a speechwriter for Barack Obama. Wong blockaded his victims in a civic center in Binghamton, N.Y., and shot as many people as he could, before killing himself.

-- Robert Stewart, 45, a three-time divorcee and high school dropout with "violent tendencies" -- according to one of his ex-wives -- who shot up the nursing home in Carthage, N.C., where his newly estranged wife worked.

-- Lovelle Mixon, 26, a paroled felon, struggling to get his life back on track by pimping, who shot four cops in Oakland, Calif. -- before eventually being shot himself.

-- Twenty-eight-year-old Michael McLendon, child of divorce, living with his mother and boycotting family funerals because he hated his relatives, who killed 10 of those relatives and their neighbors in Samson, Ala.

It might make more sense to outlaw men than guns. Or divorce. Or crack. Or to prohibit felons from having guns. Except we already outlaw crack and felons owning guns and yet still, somehow, Wong got crack and Mixon got a gun.

After being pulled over for a routine traffic violation, Lovelle Mixon did exactly what they teach in driver's ed by immediately shooting four cops. Mixon's supporters held a posthumous rally in his honor, claiming he shot the cops only in "self-defense," which I take it includes the cop Mixon shot while the officer was lying on the ground.

I guess Mixon also raped that 12-year-old girl in "self-defense." Clearly, the pimping industry has lost a good man. I wish I'd known him. I tip my green velvet fedora with the dollar signs all over it to him. Why do the good ones always die young? Pimps, I mean.

Liberals tolerate rallies on behalf of cop-killers, but they prohibit law-abiding citizens working at community centers in Binghamton, N.Y., from being armed to defend themselves from disturbed, crack-addicted America-haters like Jiverly Wong.

It's something in liberals' DNA: They think they can pass a law eliminating guns and nuclear weapons, but teenagers having sex is completely beyond our control.

The demand for more gun control in response to any crime involving a gun is exactly like Obama's response to North Korea's openly belligerent act of launching a long-range missile this week: Obama leapt to action by calling for worldwide nuclear disarmament.

If the SAT test were used to determine how stupid a liberal is, one question would be: "The best defense against lawless rogues who possess _______ is for law-abiding individuals to surrender their own _______________."

Correct answer: Guns. We would also have accepted nuclear weapons.

Obama explained that "the United States has a moral responsibility" to lead disarmament efforts because America is "the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon."

So don't go feeling all morally superior to a country whose business model consists of exporting heroin, nuclear bombs and counterfeit U.S. dollars, and of importing Swedish prostitutes, you yahoo Americans with your little flag lapel pins.

On the other hand, the Japanese haven't acted up much in the last, say, 64 years ...

Fortunately, our sailors didn't wait around for Obama to save them when Somali pirates boarded their ship this week. Stop right now or I'll ask the U.N. to remind the "international community" that "the U.S. is not at war with Somali pirates."

Gun-toting Americans are clearly more self-sufficient than the sissy Europeans. This is great news for everyone except Barney Frank, who's always secretly wondered what it would be like to be taken by a Somali pirate.

Police -- whom I gather liberals intend to continue having guns -- and intrepid U.N. resolution drafters can't be everywhere, all the time.

If a single civilian in that Binghamton community center had been armed, instead of 14 dead, there might have only been one or two -- including the shooter. In the end, the cops didn't stop Wong. His killing spree ended only when he decided to stop, and he killed himself.

"The shooter will eventually run out of ammo" strategy may not be the best one for stopping deranged multiple murderers.

But it's highly unlikely that any community center in the entire state would be safe from a disturbed former crack-addict like Wong because New York's restrictive gun laws require a citizen to prove he has a need for a gun to obtain a concealed carry permit.

Instead of having Planned Parenthood distribute condoms in schools, they ought to get the NRA to pass out revolvers. It would save more lives.

Towards a Non-Paternalistic Government

2009-04-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

The origins of authority are entrenched in mystery; yet the undeniable value of possessing and wielding authority is desirable. Historically, the power of authority has attracted many specious and myriad justifications.

Ascertaining the ultimate sources of authority is not difficult, but psychologically coping with the implications of them certainly are for most.

There is the ultimate authority of death, whose manifestation all "great" religions seek to hijack for their own purposes. There is the wonderment of life and its creation by man in the role of the father; as well as the legitimation of women's oppressed positions by relinquishing to her the role of a filthy, intrinsically sinful carrier. Of course the man who could transcend the sinful process of a sexually-created birth, and the painful reality of death could appropriate unto Himself the authority over men's triumph in life creation and the power over their very deaths. There is additionally the great question of "where did it all come from" and relatedly "where did we come from?" These three: death, birth and creation are the sources of god-speculation and with it we often find its ugly earth-cousin, authority.

Thus we have often find with religion, concomitantly or subsequently, the erection of a pyramid of mystical patriarchal authority over the pater familias of a territory intended to be ruled over by an unholy alliance of the king, his warriors and the priests. The fear of an omniscient ruler, in the personhood of the king or emperor, or preferably (for men often learn the difficult-to-conceal secret that rulers are mortals like themselves), granting to the king heavenly power, or divine right to rule, replaces the fear of the natural order and reifies it in a man that can be appeased with their slavish obeisance. Thus if the men carry out their slavishness to the ruler with enough fidelity, and the women carry out their slavishness to men with enough submissiveness, all can be admitted to the ultimate kingdom of heaven, where the slaves get the privilege of worshiping at the fountainhead of supreme authority for all eternity.

The Enlightenment was the harbinger of the destruction of divine right and the return to rule by nature, that is, reality itself. The great iconoclasts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could not openly abolish religion, for it was the securitor of authority in the minds of the unenlightened. Instead, tributary appeals to "Nature's God" and a "Creator" could draw on the power of the "most rational" Christian Thomas Aquinas, leading to Baruch de Spinoza through Locke to the great idol-smashers of Paine and Jefferson, without instantly vanquishing faith. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were meant to be the rules for man, as directly opposed to the arbitrary rule of men, and certainly not based on the mystical and often brutally violent Bible. The new authority would derive from reason and the contemplation of elected educated men; not from the amalgamous mobs, and not from the worship of omnipotent, and all-too-absent gods. Christopher Hitchens, when discussing H.L. Mencken's observation that "every man is an atheist as far as gods like Amon Ra, Juno and Pluto are concerned," was certainly astute when he pointed out that "Americans need to go just one more god further to get at the truth..."

The reflections of a Nietzsche in his Thus Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil, when combined with the implications of the deistic Charles Darwin, did not have the idolatry and superstition dispelling effect one would surmise from the content. Instead, Americans that were confronted by rising secularism rushed to revise the founding as "divinely inspired," and indeed dismissing along the way the Founding Fathers' mission of a rational basis for government, and reacted with revivalism, populism, and progressivism. These movements were anti-reason in content, exuberant and emotional in form, and appear to have all-but-destroyed the basis for limited and divided American government.

Liberty is a tumultuous but vigorous value to adopt in society, but one conducive of allowing great men, or men who seek to be great, to grapple with truth. Thus our existential crisis is not merely a symptom of a diseased state; it is a direct result of the inevitable decay of the ancient traditions of superstition and of religion in its war with reason, reality and truth. Thus it is a call for great men, the John Galts of the world if you would indulge the author, to come forward and reveal the truth of the matter to the easily deceived, before the state accrues enough power to permanently enslave them. Even if this 'permanence' is as the words of Ozymandias:

An atheistic perspective deconstructing most men's psychological or "spiritual" affinity with God, as hypothesized as an abstraction of a parental authority schema carried over from childhood, is the most conducive to setting government into a place where it is an aegis of adults learning to rule over themselves. Until such time, the protestant religion is the second best to atheism because it persuades men to recognize that we have individual relationships with "God(s)" that cannot be violated by other men or the state. But it is ultimately passive, and thus vulnerable to the attacks of the anti-freedom atheists, whose demolishing of god leads them to erect new utopian superstitions to wield against the old. The denial of an omnipotent god is a controversial statement, but I provide Protestant Christianity to those unwilling to deny Pascal's wager and so hold it out as a possible "solution" for reconciling those of monotheistic faith with the idea of the non-paternal state (as the morally just order of men ruling over themselves).

Thus in this interpretation (and from reading the writings of Jefferson and Paine), the American government was not intended to be a body to rule over men, but an aegis for men to rule over themselves without degrading into democracy. This is the realization of the Enlightenment - not that men need to be ruled over by philosopher kings, pace Plato, but that men can become philosophers themselves. Of course, not all men will choose the hard road that philosophy demands, perhaps only a small proportion at first.

As far as how government is to enact punishments and rewards in such a non-paternalistic governmental system, these are tri-fold.

First in men's interactions with reality, we must recognize the formulation of the Russian behavioralist Pavlov whose theory of conditioning posits the key feedback mechanism for biological organizms, including men, and is necessary for us all to understand our relationship with physical, material reality.

Second, in men's productive and economic lives, the market is the determinant of value, rooted in exchange and driven as an engine by men's needs and by the potentiality of want in the face of prosperity; the allure of profit as well as the deterrent of failure and ruin; these must be upheld as most consistent with man's nature.

Thus comes the predictable reaction, and what of charity? Reason indeed cannot destroy emotion, it can only order it, and assuredly, undirected emotion can destroy reason. Thus we need to posit a value that can animate the civic virtues of men. This is forthcoming below.

In any event, government cannot and must not interfere with the necessary and natural mechanisms - indeed it must recognize that there is an objective reality and allow men to interact with it and learn from it if there is to be maintained healthy material conditions able to support the life of a republic in the long-run. This is no small achievement, as the socialist in his folly assumes away and demonstrates his ignorance of, time and time again.

Third, the rule of law centered on individual rights is absolutely necessary. It there is any civic education needed to uphold this system it is that liberty, human dignity, and individuality are inviolable if one wishes to remain an equal member of society. Manners may not maketh the man, but they are a display of a society's vitality and a confirmation that mutual respect for one another's rights is actively being preserved. In other words they are a signal to others that we are safe to be ourselves and to interact spontaneously and respectfully. The decline of manners and mutual respect is thus a barometer of the decline of a nation, the sign of what Adam Ferguson might call the impending barbarism of reversion to a "rude nation."

The requirements of a civil society, as compared to simply any spontaneous order, must hold out something to animate a vigorous attachment to freedom. This must comes from an appreciation of the beauty of men being able to live in freedom; respect for one another's dignity, and the project of reason in the midst of eternal mystery, and the curiosity this provokes in the bravest men; and the esteem engendered and garnered from providing and attending to mutual respect at a basic level.

Yet judgment of good and evil, justice and injustice, noble and ignoble must not be subverted by this fundamental civil respect. This requires an education that is attenuated to seeking truth and "the good." Our educational system, to contrast, is centered on its role as an activist arm of a political party, is nihilistic, relativistic, and teaches unreason and "fiction" as philosophy.

This leads me to speculate that the decline of Western civilization is nigh; and the flowering of a new civilization, more steadfast in its dedication to reason and the natural nourishment of great minds, is forthcoming. This civilization would be less disingenuous in its tributary homage to the old religions, and more adamant and serious in its protection of individual rights and liberty. This testament would not result in the dystopic Brave New World of Huxley, but a society of sane men with sound minds.

Telegraph: President Pantywaist

2009-04-12T16:25:00.000-07:00

(Telegraph) President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice.

Barack Obama in Prague on his astonishingly successful tour

Barack is not the first New World ingenue to discover that European leaders will load him with praise, struggle sycophantically to be photographed with him and outdo him in Utopian rhetoric. But when it comes to the critical moment of opening their wallets - suddenly it is flag-day in Aberdeen. Okay, put the G20 down to inexperience, beginner's nerves, what you will.

On to Nato and the next big objective: to persuade the same European evasion experts that America, Britain and Canada should no longer bear the brunt of the Afghan struggle virtually unassisted. The Old World sucked through its teeth, said that was asking a lot - but, seeing it was Barack, to whom they could refuse nothing, they would graciously accede to his wishes.

So The One retired triumphant, having secured a massive contribution of 5,000 extra troops - all of them non-combatant, of course - which must really have put the wind up the Taliban, at the prospect of 5,000 more infidel cooks and bottle-washers swarming into the less hazardous regions of Afghanistan.

Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. America had Aegis destroyers tracking the missile and could have shot it down. But Uncle Sam had a sterner reprisal in store for l'il ole Kim (as Dame Edna might call him): a multi-megaton strike of Obama hot air.

"Rules must be binding," declared Obama, referring to the fact that Kim had just breached UN Resolutions 1695 and 1718. "Violations must be punished." (Sounds ominous.) "Words must mean something." (Why, Barack? They never did before, for you - as a cursory glance at your many speeches will show.)

President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America's missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun.

Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative on nuclear disarmament and sitting down to negotiate with any power freak who wants to buy time to get a good ICBM fix on San Francisco, or wherever. If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.

The Father of All

2009-04-12T06:50:00.000-07:00

Below is my favorite place from Plato’s Euthydemus. Socrates managed to show the ridiculous absurdities of the Sophists a long time ago. And yet currently intellectual heirs of the Sophists are mainstream.

And is Patrocles, he said, your brother?
Yes, I said, he is my half-brother, the son of my mother, but not of my father.

Then he is and is not your brother.
Not by the same father, my good man, I said, for Chaeredemus was his father, and mine was Sophroniscus.

And was Sophroniscus a father, and Chaeredemus also?
Yes, I said; the former was my father, and the latter his.
Then, he said, Chaeredemus is not a father.
He is not my father, I said.
But can a father be other than a father? or are you the same as a stone?

I certainly do not think that I am a stone, I said, though I am afraid that you may prove me to be one.

Are you not other than a stone?
I am.
And being other than a stone, you are not a stone; and being other than gold, you are not gold?

Very true.
And so Chaeredemus, he said, being other than a father, is not a father?

I suppose that he is not a father, I replied.
For if, said Euthydemus, taking up the argument, Chaeredemus is a father, then Sophroniscus, being other than a father, is not a father; and you, Socrates, are without a father.

Ctesippus, here taking up the argument, said: And is not your father in the same case, for he is other than my father?

Assuredly not, said Euthydemus.
Then he is the same?
He is the same.
I cannot say that I like the connection; but is he only my father, Euthydemus, or is he the father of all other men?

Of all other men, he replied. Do you suppose the same person to be a father and not a father?

Certainly, I did so imagine, said Ctesippus.
And do you suppose that gold is not gold, or that a man is not a man?

They are not "in pari materia," Euthydemus, said Ctesippus, and you had better take care, for it is monstrous to suppose that your father is the father of all.

But he is, he replied.
What, of men only, said Ctesippus, or of horses and of all other animals?

Of all, he said.
And your mother, too, is the mother of all?
Yes, our mother too.
Yes; and your mother has a progeny of sea-urchins then?
Yes; and yours, he said.
And gudgeons and puppies and pigs are your brothers?
And yours too.
And your papa is a dog?
And so is yours, he said.
If you will answer my questions, said Dionysodorus, I will soon extract the same admissions from you, Ctesippus. You say that you have a dog.

Yes, a villain of a one, said Ctesippus.
And he has puppies?
Yes, and they are very like himself.
And the dog is the father of them?
Yes, he said, I certainly saw him and the mother of the puppies come together.

And is he not yours?
To be sure he is.
Then he is a father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your father, and the puppies are your brothers.

Let me ask you one little question more, said Dionysodorus, quickly interposing, in order that Ctesippus might not get in his word: You beat this dog?

Ctesippus said, laughing, Indeed I do; and I only wish that I could beat you instead of him.

Then you beat your father, he said.
I should have far more reason to beat yours, said Ctesippus; what could he have been thinking of when he begat such wise sons? much good has this father of you and your brethren the puppies got out of this wisdom of yours.

A Battle of Wills

2009-04-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

When the world resembled hell come to life, full of dirt and rotting and burning flesh, and the sun of learning had been eclipsed by the preachings of an evil prophet, two men skirmished in a battle of wills. The first employed the treacherous dagger of violence in the skirmish, while the second used his only weapon, his mind.

The first claimed that knowledge is useless and commanded blind allegiance to faith and complete obedience to authority. The second sought to revive the healthy and vibrant culture that had preceded the victory of the evil prophet. Partially due to his efforts, the sun would rise again and shine brighter than ever before. He openly defied the powers that be and rejected the stupifying and deadly faith of his contemporaries.
In the presence of the first, people cowered and cringed in awe of his firebrand speeches. To the second, people flocked to see a spark of reason amidst the darkness that surrounded them.
The first espoused death and preached the doctrine that flesh is vile and this world is evil. The second embraced life and had a passionate romantic affair with a woman.
The first was exalted to the highest of the high and venerated as a saint. The second was cast down to the lowest of the low and denounced as a heretic.
And yet it is the first whose name would be forgotten. His writings would crumble and perish in the dust heap of history. In the words of his cruel and psychotic demiurge, he was dust and unto dust he returned.
It is the second who would be remembered for ages to come - forever and ever - as a reminder of the beauty that is man. He showed that man is more than dust. From dust, man would come to the stars.
Thus ends the story of Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter Abelard.

I Have a Dream in 2109

2009-04-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for serfdom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, led his people out of conservative bondage into the promised land of milk and honey. His momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of modern liberal slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering economic injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their bourgeois captivity.

But one hundred years later, the modern liberal still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the modern liberal is still sadly crippled by the manacles of reality and its chains of forced labor. One hundred years later, the modern liberal lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the modern liberal is still vanquished from the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his former land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to their nation's capital to cash a check. When Obama, the architect of our new republic, wrote the magnificent words of our Constitution and the Declaration of Dependence, he was signing a promissory note to which every modern liberal was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as purple men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Welfare checks, social programs and the pursuit of Meaninglessness." It is obvious today that our former homeland of America defaulted on this promise of a brighter tomorrow, insofar as her prosperous "bourgeois" citizens are concerned. Instead of honoring their sacred obligations, America has given the exiled modern liberals a bad check, a check which has come back marked "get your own funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of economic injustice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are no funds for us there in those great vaults of opportunity of that other nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of the producers and the security of unearned loot.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind our brothers in America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of producing your own wealth or to take the tranquilizing drug of self-interest. Now is the time to make real the promises of socialist democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of economic prosperity to the sunlit path of shared poverty. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of your economic injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make economic justice a reality for all of Obama's children.

It would be fatal for your nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the modern liberal's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of handouts and loot. Two thousand one hundred and nine is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the modern liberal needed to blow off steam and will now be content with earning his own living will have a rude awakening if your nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the modern liberal is granted his free meal ticket, free healthcare and free space vacation rights. The whirlwinds of invasion and agitation will continue to shake the foundations of your nation until the bright day of economic justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to your people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads us to your El Dorado of peace and wealth: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of relinquishing our demands. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for riches by drinking from the cup of patience and self-discipline. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of agitation and complaining. We must not allow our creative protestation to degenerate into moderation. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting the wealthy with our whining.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the modern liberal state of Obamatopia must not lead us to the murder of all successful self-made people, for many of our modern liberal brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that America's destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that America's prosperity is inextricably bound to our hostility.

We cannot survive alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of economic rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the modern liberal is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of other people earning a living. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of agitation, cannot gain entrance into your gilded cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the modern liberal's basic mobility is prevented from returning to the Second Free Republic of America . We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of your riches and robbed of the right to your money by stating: "For Real Americans Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a modern liberal in Obamatopia cannot vote for welfare programs in America and the progressive here believes he has no one to vote for (given Obama's sacred family name has been rightfully preserved in perpetuity). No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "loot rolls down like waters, and unearned riches like a mighty stream."

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from the forced labor camps. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for loot left you battered by the storms of resistance and staggered by the winds of self-interest. You have been the victims of your unintended suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unintended suffering is redemptive. Go back to Obamatopia, to Clintonville, to Michelleton, to Barneyburg, to Schumer City, to Pelosi Village, and to Carville, go back to the slums and ghettos of our capital cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of perspiration, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in Obama's dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Obamatopia, the sons of future slaves and the slaves of future sons will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of New Clinton, a state sweltering with the heat of America's economic injustice, sweltering in the heat of its oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of welfare checks and social programs.

I have a dream that my four cryogenically frozen fetuses will one day live in a nation where the welfare system can support them and they will not be judged by the slightly-bluish color of their skin but by their ability to live off of others' labor.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Schumer City, with its glorious concrete facades, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "welfare handouts" and "bread lines" -- one day right there in that burdened community little modern liberal boys and little progressive girls will be able to join hands with their slave-sponsors in peace and harmony.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of homogeneous vacuous equality will be made plain for all to see."

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to America with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of riches a fistful of loot. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of your nation into a beautiful symphony of "brotherhood." With this faith, you will be able to work and support us, to pray for our easy life, to struggle on our behalf, to go to jail when you refuse to pay, to stand up for freedom only to be swatted back down, knowing that you will be free - only if we get tired of our idleness.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of America's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of poverty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of Obama's pride,

From every mountainside, let serfdom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let serfdom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let serfdom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let serfdom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let serfdom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let serfdom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let serfdom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let serfdom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let serfdom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let serfdom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow serfdom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of Obama's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to manacle their hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Slaves at last! Slaves at last!

Thank Obama Almighty, we are slaves at last!

The Destructive Nature of State Help

2009-04-11T03:40:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Rush Limbaugh cited a CNN news story that (incredibly) reported that residents on the Hawaiian island of Kauai recently banded together to repair a damaged service road that was estimated by the state to cost $4 million and two years to fix. The cost to taxpayers? Free. The time it took to complete? Eight days.

The reason for the residents taking matters into their own hands is that their personal self-interests were directly involved. Because the closed road directly harmed their business Recreation Renaissance, they could not afford to let a bureaucratic black hole of paperwork and funding swallow their livelihoods. They mobilized and acted to solve a true problem for their community, as opposed to waiting for an imaginary and contrived problem to be solved by the state.

This is perhaps one of the best modern illustrations of a community's spontaneous self-organization, an idea that has heritage in Adam Ferguson's An Essay on the History of Civil Society, and was developed further in Alexis de Tocqueville's classic Democracy in America. A related concept more recently articulated is the "spontaneous order" of Chicago schooler F.A. Hayek.

Adam Ferguson, a Scottish Enlightenment intellectual, compared the civic life of his country Scotland with the "virtuous" Roman republic and the Greeks; he contrasted these with the "rude nations" of ancient Gaul, Germany, and others. As Ferguson wrote in his chapter Of the Decline of Nations, "The wealth, the aggrandizement and power of nations, are commonly the effects of virtue; the loss of these advantages, is often a consequence of vice."

Ferguson was concerned with such issues as the professionalization of the army, which he thought would detract from the virtue of the nation and lead to civic apathy. He also thought a professional army would pose a threat to the safety and security of the country. He tied this threat to the specialization famously elaborated on by his contemporary Adam Smith in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Against this trend toward specialization and a decline in civic virtue he counterpoised the idea of spontaneous human action. As Ferguson wrote, "Many human institutions are the result of human action, but not of human design.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat who toured America in the 1830s, wrote one of the most profound analyses of American life by any intellectual. His purpose was to investigate the life of our fledgling republic and to relay his findings back to his countrymen in France.

As Tocqueville discovered, a particular genius of America is that the men and women of the various communities organized themselves to solve their own unique problems. In addition to churches, the numerous clubs, associations, and even beer halls served to animate civil society as a remarkable association of legal equals. This is another way of saying that men and women were individuals and not representations of collectivist fictions.

One conclusion that can be drawn from Tocqueville's work is the problematic nature of labeling middle America "bourgeois society." Another is that Jeffersonian decentralization is key to allowing for freedom and civic virtue. Such observations are vital to understanding the apathy and declining civic virtue currently in America, a phenomenon well-described by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone.

One of the best modern articulations of the idea of a "spontaneous order" comes from F.A. Hayek, author of the indispensable The Road to Serfdom. Between his works The Sensory Order and The Fatal Conceit, he developed his theory that price signals operate as a human language, providing information that must not be artificially obstructed. The morally just and most efficient society is the one that sees humans as sentient beings, best able to assess the conditions of their local environment and to satisfy their own perceived needs. It is the role of government to provide the safety needed for humans to operate in their environment, and to ensure the transparency of the market through a simple, comprehensible and equally applied rule of law.

The United States government is currently nowhere near the ideal of freedom by Toccquevillian, Jeffersonian or Hayekian standards. It is infested with bureaucratic parasites and welfare roll recipients who consistently vote to extract resources from the producers. They penalize the free use of labor and the benefits accrued from applying it to solving problems in society through the market. This necessarily leads to apathy and the destruction of civil society; pace the socialists seeking to redefine civil society as a place where community activists agitate people to vote on behalf of their own incapacity to recognize and solve their own problems.

Which leaves me with a question: Does anyone know of any other examples than the one Rush cited where the state has obstructed people from solving their own problems and the citizens decided to "do it themselves"? It might be interesting to compile a list.

Obama and Manny Talk Shop

2009-04-10T20:05:00.000-07:00

Principal Davis and Ms. Crabgrass' Plan

2009-04-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

The Irrational Cannot Be Consistently Practiced

2009-04-10T14:06:00.000-07:00

I think this is a very important point.
Though religion enjoys the image of commitment to principle, this image cannot withstand scrutiny. Religious people cannot be principled in practice because of a chasm between articles of faith and facts of reality. Irrational doctrines cannot be consistently practiced. To the extent that any idea is accepted qua religious, on faith, because it is being decreed by certain hierarchs or revelation, it is irrational. As such, it is inimical to the requirements of human existence, since man’s fundamental means of survival is reason. Ayn Rand has written quite tellingly on this score. Those who profess to accept irrational doctrines, be they religious or any other sort, cannot avoid violating those doctrines on a regular basis.
(...)
Given that the demands of the widely endorsed doctrines – collectivism, sacrifice, service – can’t be dutifully practiced, pragmatism offers relief, a welcome loophole (a false loophole, of course-ed.). Pragmatism authorizes deviations that do make sense in so far as they are deviations from irrational ideas (in all other respects it doesn’t make any sense-ed.).
Tara Smith
The quote is from this video.
In other words, pragmatism and impractical idealism are two sides of the same coin. Irrational idealism (religion, socialism etc) needs the loophole of pragmatism in order to be practicable, while pragmatism needs idealism because no ideology can exist without at least some abstract principles, even if its essence is the rejection of principles.

Obama's Auto Bailout

2009-04-10T10:10:00.000-07:00

An acquaintance of mine has also made a vid to pay homage to the petty tyrant.

The Europe that Once Was

2009-04-10T04:05:00.000-07:00

In the midst of Europe, once a bastion of freedom, a man is being prosecuted for speaking his mind. Or shall I say "persecuted"?
In Europe, the cradle of the Enlightenment, a man is being tried for speaking the truth.
In Europe, the native land of natural rights, a man is being bullied for challenging an ideology intent on butchering and enslaving everyone who does not adhere to it.
For the very same reasons, in February he was kicked out of the United Kingdom, the country which used to be Europe's freest and most prosperous.
The man is Dutch politician Geert Wilders, the author of Fitna, a film that does nothing but show what adherents of the above-mentioned ideology say and do. For showing what they say and do, they have threatened him with death over 280 times.
In 2004 another Dutchman, Theo van Gogh, was murdered for producing Submission, a film that shows what advocates of that ideology say about and do to women. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the author of the screenplay, has been in hiding since then.
In the nearby Denmark, the Jyllands-Posten daily's staff were threatened with death in 2005 for violating the religious ban on the drawing of images of a man who killed people for disagreeing with him in the seventh century AD. Many have died in protests over the images, including those who did not take part in the riots.
There is, however, a ray of hope. Wilders' libertarian-leaning Party for Freedom is topping the polls in the run-up to the election of the Dutch delegation to the European Parliament, scheduled for June.
Make the right choice, Dutchmen. Let us remember the Europe that once was. Let us revive the Europe that no longer exists. Let us see the Europe as it must be.
The Europe of Aristotle, Copernicus and Leonardo da Vinci. Not the Europe of Gordon Brown, Ken Livingstone and Gerhard Schroeder.
A land of giants, not of dwarfs.
Europe, not Eurabia.

Manny Makes Offer Lissa Can't Refuse

2009-04-09T22:31:00.000-07:00

Manny the Fish Has a Chat with Bobby

2009-04-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

Young Obama Gets Some Muscle

2009-04-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

Young Obama at the Principal's Office

2009-04-09T19:01:00.000-07:00

A Meeting between Me and Obama

2009-04-09T16:51:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Reasonsjester, I also decided to make a movie.

America at the Gates of Obama's Pragmatist Hell

2009-04-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

Check out a brilliant lecture on how pragmatism is destroying the modern culture. It is now embraced by conservatives and liberals, theists and atheists, materialists and idealists - most of the people. It should be noted that pragmatism, not hardline Marxism, is a distinctive feature of Obamaoist tyranny. In a certain sense, Marxism might be better because Marxists at least feel respect for abstract ideas (though they adhere to erroneous and stupid ideas). Pragmatism, on the other hand, reflects profound disrespect for everything abstract, for conceptual thinking, for reason. A pragmatist seeks to evolve back to the pre-conceptual level - the perceptual consciousness of animals. Animals can get away with it because it is part of their nature. Man cannot.
Remember Obama's phrase that it doesn't matter if government is small or big and that it only matters whether it's "efficient"? It was a pragmatist idea. Efficient by what standard? Blank out. Isn't the size of government connected with its efficiency? Blank out. These are questions irrelevant for a pragmatist. He doesn't care about abstractions, he only pursues what "works." Works by what standard? Blank out.
It seems bizarre that even the most primitive kind of brute can't understand that practice depends on theory, that actions depend on thought, that every concrete has meaning only if it is integrated into an abstraction. The ONLY way to be truly "practical" is to be "theoretical." The ONLY way to act correctly is to think correctly. Pragmatists turn the order of things upside down, claiming that truth doesn't matter, and the only thing that matters is what "works." They don't seem to understand that ONLY the truth works.

Danger: Poll on Capitalism vs. Socialism

2009-04-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

Drudge Report:

Rasmussen Poll: Just 53% of Americans Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism...

UPDATE: Key demographics:

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

The thirty-percent undecideds in the under 30 group indicate that all is not lost - yet. But their refusal to make a decision makes their opinions a near wash, in light of the 70% with some stated preference.

This poll should be seen against the backdrop that the Democrats have violated the contract that makes this a country in any meaningful sense. Nearly half the country supports them or are reliably ambivalent. Fundamentally, there is no "compromise" between a free market and socialism, therefore the political process in this context is inherently destructive. The Constitution is not a matter up for debate in the House of Lords. Unfortunately, a growing number of Americans have no such sensibilities.

Historically, such conditions bode ill...the rationale for elections is that the defeated side can take solace in the fact that they may be elected in a few years and may change things more to the liking of the majority of citizens. When you have one party that is working outside of the Constitutional system, and nearly half of the citizens support them or are loyal to them, then such a framework is meaningless. Political struggle moves from the institutionalized to the public sphere, as people grow more frustrated with government and their fellow citizens for violating their trust. I am genuinely, truly concerned as a political scientist...

UPDATE 2: Better News

It is interesting to compare the new results to an earlier survey in which 70% of Americans prefer a free-market economy. The fact that a “free-market economy” attracts substantially more support than “capitalism” may suggest some skepticism about whether capitalism in the United States today relies on free markets.

More commentary forthcoming as data comes in. This latter poll may be linked to earlier analysis at PvCP that questions the meaning of "capitalism" in the American context. Please feel free to contribute your own analysis.

UPDATE 3: Best news

Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.

And they would be right. This suggests that the middle third of Americans are merely confused and could be reclaimed for the side of sanity with the right education. So make your tax protest day sign count!

Young Obama's First Economic Proposal

2009-04-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

Young Obama Courts the Feminist Vote

2009-04-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

Young Obama - Too Cool for School

2009-04-08T18:29:00.000-07:00

PJ O'Rourke's 1994 CPAC Speech

2009-04-08T14:23:00.000-07:00

From a speech given at the CPAC roast of Robert Novak

I know it's late, but I think there's always time for a fair and evenhanded assessment, a nice objective little look, at the Clinton administration:

Simps and ninnies, lava lamp liberals and condo pinks.

Spoiled twerps, racket-jawed purveyors of monkey doodle and baked wind.

They are piddlers upon merit, beggars at the door of accomplishment, thieves of livelihood, envy-coddling tax lice applauding themselves for giving away other people's money.

They are the lap dogs of the poli-sci class, returning to the vomit of liberalism.

They are little pig herders, tending that sow that eats her young - the Welfare State.

They are muck dwelling bottom feeders, growing fat on the worries and disappointments of the electorate.

They are the ditch carp of democracy. [More...]

The Truth of Our Founding

2009-04-08T07:50:00.000-07:00

Two hundred and thirty three years ago, our country chartered a manifesto to break the bonds not only of colonial servitude, but the bounds of tradition and obeisance to arbitrary rulers. Man would instead be enlisted to rule and serve himself, and thus society, within the strictures of a rule of law derived by reason and grounded in truth. The Declaration of Independence was, and still is, a radical document.

The foundation of the American Republic in self-interest was not an instrumental one; it served no political science; it was a first principle of political philosophy that was powerful and emancipatory because it was true. This is an understanding of philosophy virtually unknown in modern times.

Philosophy does not serve because it is pliable and negotiable, and thus an instrument of politicians, but because the demands of truth are harsh and require a rigorous and uncompromising mind, and a person unafraid to take unpopular positions.

When the Founding Fathers boldly justified their revolution with philosophy, the love of knowledge, properly speaking (as opposed to sophistry), their courage and convictions were anchored in eternal truths rather than ephemeral interests.

The slurs of the founding by revisionist historians such as Charles Beard and Howard Zinn belie a refusal to engage the philosophy of the founding on the merits of truth. Specifically, their assault on this nation's history is based on supposedly self-evident attacks on both the Founding Fathers and their "narrow self-interest."

Yet the founders were not proposing to satisfy their self-interests at the expense of others; they were embedding the reality of self-interest in a revolutionary document for the world to see and offering it as a light to those in darkness. It was intended for men whose reason could apprehend it, not for those charlatans whose designs on power lead them to popular and opportunistic political statements.

The recognition that educated men can apprehend truth by reason is the antithesis of the insulting and inhumane nature of Marxism; this anti-philosophy's dogmatism is that all of its opponents are engaged in ad hoc rationalizations that are but reflections of their narrow and selfish material interests. Intrinsically, they believe themselves altruists, and inexplicably able to escape the 'false consciousness' of capitalism. This is a faith-charter that exempts them from natural laws and the bounds of their own philosophy.

Marxism is also unreason in that dialectical materialism violates the principle in logic of non-contradiction. The predictable result is destruction and chaos; indeed, it was the intent of Marx to foment a world revolution before he devised his Communist Manifesto.

The American system, in contrast, was designed to succeed. The genius of the political science of the founding, as framed by the Constitution, is that our economic and political system complemented self-interest and material progress by linking them in the market, while providing safeguards against arbitrary coercion by government. The liberalization of the natural mechanism of self-interest promoted competition, individual responsibility, and hard work, while it punished laziness, stupidity and misunderstanding of reality.

This near perfection of a political and economic system led the American spirit to become pragmatic, and we lost that philosophical awareness that our system is best because it is the right one. Over time this pragmatism, when combined with state subversion of the intellectual life of the republic, bled over into relativism. This has culminated in our existential identity crisis as a country, bringing us to the precipice of self-destruction.

The left has been frustrated by their inability to reorder the country according to their own truly selfish personal preferences, which would have them as architects of a new totalitarian order and enlist Americans as the slaves to erect their pyramids in the sky. Their designs on systematizing the cultural and "spiritual" life of the republic, instead of the allowing the spontaneous orders of civil societies, is an imperialism over the mind that our founding fathers would have revolted against.

To bring us to the point where men will volunteer slavery and take hope in the left's "noble lies," the leftists have intentionally eroded the reason so necessary to apprehend the genius of the American founding, as well as the radical tradition of liberty, as supplemented by the respect of individual rights and the dignity of self-reliance that must comprise civic education.

The left's intention to reinvent America must lead, as Evan Sayet observed, to a leveling of all greatness, a punishment of success, a reward of failure, a critique of all that is noble, a privileging of the grotesque and immoral. Worst of all, the liberals intend to embed their beliefs in the American political system, instead of merely practicing their own unreason, unvirtue, and unfreedom and taking personal responsibility for the consequences of their untrue positions.

The American Revolution did not succeed because it was based on tradition. It was a radical experiment that achieved because it was enshrined in truth. Truth led the founders of the republic to amazingly conclude that government was a necessary and ever-distrusted evil to rule over imperfect men. This is hardly a conclusion the future leaders of a country would willingly adopt under normal circumstances. This makes America exceptional in many ways; yet also an exemplar for peoples in the world who desire to throw off their oppressive governments.

The inability of modern liberals to appreciate historical facts or philosophical truth has led to the reinvention of government as an engine of altruism. This is a dangerous idea that leads inexorably, by the dictates of its own perverse logic, to tyranny.

A Good Method of Dealing with Liberals

2009-04-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

American culture as we know it is in the middle of an economic and social crisis. There is a war in Iraq, the jails are full of negroes, the streets are brimming with homeless people, liberals are legally allowed to exist and most other countries despise us. However, most (if not all) of these issues could be put to rest with the re-legalization of slavery.

Currently there are approximately two million homeless people clogging up our gutters, three million ex cons about to be paroled from prison, five million fat stay at home mom’s, eight million illegal immigrants, and a whooping seventy million children who all have one very important thing in common. They all need a steady job.

Why not slavery?

Every American family can benefit from slave ownership. Your new slave can clean your house, cook your meals, and program new songs into your IPOD. I’ve also heard that they are good at picking cotton, tending to the animals and sitting in circles around campfires while they sing ‘Kumbaya.’ If you have a shed with a dirt floor and edible scraps of food to spare, then the possibilities are endless. Slave ownership should be considered the new American dream.

The best part is that you give the homeless a chance to feel valued while simultaneously stimulating their natural work ethic. According to recent scientific studies, the homeless are some of the hardest working people in history. And nine out of ten homeless people agree that they’d feel “accomplished, happy, and successful” if only someone would make them a slave.

GM: The People's Volkswagon?

2009-04-08T04:56:00.000-07:00

Fiat Gulagia, Pereat Mundus

2009-04-08T01:18:00.000-07:00

Members of the U.S. Politburo meet with their chums from the Gulag across the sea.

Gun Control: A Euphemism for Slavery

2009-04-07T13:34:00.000-07:00

Throughout history those who bore arms simultaneously held supreme political power. In aristocracies and oligarchies, these were aristocrats and oligarchs, while in democracies power belonged to the demos. In ancient democracies, however, slaves were prohibited from owning arms.
It is a distinctive characteristic of modern totalitarian democracies that the possession of arms is either de facto prohibited or severely restricted for all social groups (the U.S. is an exception, so far, though it is drifting in the same direction). Consider the implications. Only the State, the impersonal absolute overlord of the modern world, has a monopoly on arms. Citizens of the modern welfare-warfare utopia are no more than mere state slaves. This is rapidly becoming less of a metaphor and more of a reality.

A Retort to Obama

2009-04-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

AP photographers play games with ethnic representation in the military.

Obama flew into Baghdad on his magic carpet ride and promptly issued the reprimand that it's time for Iraqis to "take responsibility for their country." As if we would-be dictators were occasioned in Iraq by our wanderlust, oil addiction and our indiscriminate "war on Islam."

You have to give it to our president, he's got moxie.

Even while Obama gave us a much-needed recess by embarking on his pompous world tour, he has wielded anti-American rhetoric that has emboldened our enemies, demoralized the citizens, and recast the historical record to our detriment. The narcissist now stands on the victory for freedom that is Iraq and Afghanistan, a cause for true hope in the world delivered to him by virtue of our soldiers' sacrifices - men and women led by Obama's vanquished predecessor.

"You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country," the president said as he made a brief inspection of a war he opposed as candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. "That is an extraordinary achievement."...

Years after Bush had the judgment to foresee the trend of evil in the world and it would take more than 'words in the ether' to diminish it, the painful irony becomes clear: While we were abroad defending others' freedoms, we have watched them slip away at home.

Contrary to prevailing wisdom, this was not due to any insidious plot by George Bush, as the alleged rationale for adventurism in the Middle East of "blood for oil" turns out to be hollow; indeed while the green Lilliputians bound our economic giant with cords of environmental regulations, and the petro-dictatorships of the world grew rich at our expense, we refrained from absconding with the wealth of easy prey.

The empire that never was crumbles from internal moral decay, a result of the decadence that comes from the unappreciated legacy of our republic's forebearers. The lamp they lit in the world could only burn by reason; the crowding hordes of unreason have gathered 'round on all sides, winnowing the flame, now flickered and grown dim in the dark rain of night.

Young Obama Shares Ideas on World Peace

2009-04-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

Global Warming for Dummies

2009-04-06T12:32:00.000-07:00

The Eternal Odyssey of the Left

2009-04-06T08:21:00.000-07:00

The intellectual fugue of the left is a perpetual Odyssey, where they slay the monsters of their own imagination. Their perception of reality is that there is no reality, or more precisely, that reality is "change" itself. But as Aristotle pointed out, change must have an essence in something else, something that all becoming must arise from. (Interestingly enough however, Aristotle did not believe in a Creation, but in an eternal universe.) To sum up, liberals have nothing to cling to except "change" and the results of their change seem to be inconsequential to them.

The shallow, ephemeral end-goal of their change is a status quo of nihilistic peace leveling all values except for valuelessness, the ultimate in relativism. The question becomes, then what do we do with ourselves?

This is why I am a follower of the Enlightenment, like our Founding Fathers. The essence of man is reason, and with curiosity and a creative spirit, we must seek truth in the universe. This is a task bigger than mankind, and one he can continually strive for and never completely fulfill. He can, nonetheless, achieve.

The objection that modern liberals have to scientific progress is that it lead to two catastrophic world wars and the development of nuclear weapons. But these analysts-come-lately never seem to get that wars in "pre-modern" times were just as catastrophic in terms of the ratios of men consumed by them. The Thirty Years' War, the Hundred Years' War, even going back to the infamous Battle of Cannae in the Second Punic War and the obliteration of Carthage in the Third Punic War, not to mention the decimation of Melos described by Thucydides in the Melian dialogue, these show that men can be violent creatures. But this nature is not inherently tied to modern scientific progress. Science is but a means to an end, and it is morality that determines the rightful end; these are life, reality and truth. All arguments to the contrary are by the terms of their own objection null, and by impication, conducive to death and civilizational destruction.

It is the province of morality to instruct men on how to conquer their own natures, including their potential of aggression; to live peacefully in society; and in accordance with these goals to punish those that violate the laws against violent, destructive behavior. This is why the true danger of modern times is not science, it is collectivism of any kind. This is not to say that men should not collectively establish security to preserve law and order. The design of this security should be decentralized unless the security of the nation is imminently threatened.

The isolated danger of violent individuals pales in significance to the great danger when they are organized. Individualism is thus a restraint on the evil men can do. It also relegates to the realm of personal responsibility the struggle of men against their own nature. When socialized into civil society, men should be taught to choose achievement in the public sphere, friendship based on respect and dignity, and the civic virtue of improving themselves, and thus the lot of mankind. The economic system is key here: the reward of man's achievement must be sum-gain; and this is the genius of the market.

The Religion of Peace

2009-04-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

In Yathrib (Medina), Muhammad had a number of people killed. One of them was `Asma' bint Marwan. Her crime was that she spoke out against Muhammad for having another man murdered named Abu Afak. In his displeasure towards her, Muhammad asked his followers to murder her as well. She was killed while she slept.

Seattle PI: Reserve soldier sues UW, alleges discrimination

2009-04-06T06:51:00.000-07:00

By LEVI PULKKINEN
SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

An Army reservist employed at the University of Washington has filed suit against the institution, asserting in court papers that he has been harassed and discriminated against for serving in Iraq.

Employed by UW as an electrician since 1992, Army Reserve Lt. Col. James Lukehart had risen in the ranks of the university's facilities department and was working as a maintenance manager when he was ordered to deploy to Iraq in June 2006.

Before he went overseas, a group of his coworkers had told him he would be "engaging in immoral, if not illegal, action" if he went to Iraq as ordered, Lukehart asserts in court documents. Still, the reservist went to war less than three weeks after receiving notice that he'd be deployed.

According to military news reports, Lukehart served as an executive officer in an engineering brigade stationed at Ballad Air Base, 70 miles north of Baghdad. Among Lukehart's duties while deployed, according to an August 2007 edition of the Camp Anaconda Times, was the construction of a water-treatment plant in rural Iraq.

Hoping to return to work in September 2007, Lukehart found that his manager had launched an investigation into allegations of misconduct made against him while serving overseas, according to court papers.

Through his attorney, Sidney Strong, Lukehart alleges that the university gave him no notice that he was under investigation. Confronted by Lukehart, the university even declined to say what the allegations had been made.

The university "refused to provide him with any statement of the charges made against him, instead insisting that (Lukehart) had no need to know either the allegations made against him or the source of those allegations," Strong said in court documents filed earlier this month in King County Superior Court.

Strong did not return calls requesting comment.

Lukehart claims that, facing the loss of his job, he agreed to university demands that he be demoted and accept a pay cut. In the year-and-a-half since, he contends, the coworkers who'd previously complained about his military service have subjected him to "continuing harassment and intimidation."

Reached for comment, UW spokesman Norm Arkans declined to comment in detail on the case due to the status of the litigation.

"Mr. Lukehart's change in status had nothing to do with his service in Iraq, and we will show this in court," Arkans said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, 22,000 reservists have filed suits complaints with the Department of Labor claiming they lost seniority or pay because of their service, said Tom Tarantino, a retired Army captain with the veterans advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. About 11,000 have filed claims asserting they were denied reemployment after coming home.

Tarantino said IAVA is currently supporting legislation that would strengthen the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, the law under which Lukehart has filed suit. As the law currently stands, Tarantino said, reservists must either file a civil suit as Lukehart has done or go through non-binding arbitration; those who opt for arbitration often find any ruling nearly impossible to enforce.

All told, Tarantino said, about 10 percent of reservists released from active duty have problems returning to work. IAVA and other veterans organizations are urging Congress to impose stronger sanctions against employers that violate the law, including prohibitions from obtaining government contracts and criminal charges.

"We believe (violators) should face civil and criminal prosecution," Tarantino said. "This isn't something that employers don't know about. If they violated USERRA, it's a willful violation."

Asked whether he'd heard of discrimination or harassment from many service members returned from the wars, Tarantino said stories like Lukehart's have been thankfully few.

"I hadn't heard many reports of many people being openly hostile to veterans because of their service," the Iraq veteran said. "We're not seeing that, which is actually kind of amazing given how the Vietnam generation was treated."

The university has yet to file a response to Lukehart's suit, which requests unspecified compensation. Preliminary hearings have not yet been scheduled.

Modern Liberalism as a Secular Religion

2009-04-06T06:41:00.000-07:00

A friend was telling me of a liberal who had no urge to have his worldview challenged. This dogmatism is reminiscent of the totalitarian religious mindsets in Europe before the Reformation. Modern liberalism as a secular religion? A few brief thoughts.

I was revisiting some notes from a Marxist prof, and his critique of "reason" and the "Enlightenment" rested on his invidium of the "bourgeois public sphere." This is what it really boils down to for libs - they don't like the mass culture of America. Their intention and design is to mold it, reinvent it, "change" it and revolutionize it.

It is no accident that Marx, an intelligent but misguided man, incapable as he was of adapting himself to industrial society, set out with the aim of his manifesto to revolutionize society and bring it to him, rather than vice versa. And the bourgeois men of the Enlightenment are considered by the left to be "selfish"? What could be more selfish than to attempt to redesign the world according to one's feelings and impressions of it? This is a reversion to a pre-modern worldview that would deign that a virtuous demagogue is sufficient to preserve the harmonious affairs of men, provided that those men have no aspiration, no desire of their own. The predictable result of their dismissal of human nature, with all its sexual energy, competitive spirit, and violent urges is unbounded, unmitigated conflict, and its wake, mass repression. We are not bonobos to be redirected to meaningless copulation and irresponsible reproduction (this goal to sexualize man's aggression partially explains the left's fetish of abortion).

The preoccupation of the left with mass culture is thus dangerously misguided. Isn't it the more noble and peaceful struggle of man to wrestle with our own minds, our own emotions, and attempt to bring them into accord with the demands of a just and orderly society? This while striving for greatness in our own unique ways, as measured by our own standards of accomplishment?

Interestingly, from the point of view of the leftists' critique of America, the modern libs' related value of "equality" is a cultural leveler that fuels the societal malaise and anomie they attack (see Soviet societies, and the more liberal regions of the U.S.). This provides them the opportunity to step in with their "humanities" and "liberal arts" with the intent of 're-educating' bourgeois society.

So what is this modern liberal alternative to a political order based on reason? Certainly it isn't the nationalistic and particularistic view of the Nazis or Mussolini's fascist party, though they certainly garnered their leftist supporters as well as their nationalist "right-wing" ones (by European standards). The interesting thing about the Nazis is that they are claimed by the left to be a representation of Reason in its ugliest form, as traced back to Hegel. Yet Romanticism was a reaction against the Enlightenment; and Hegel's "Reason" has as much to do with Locke's and Jefferson's as American conservatism has to do with its European namesake.

Instead, the modern left's shibboleth is the internationalist triumphalism that asserts we can erect a world order based on peace. But peace is not the satisfier of man's creative aspirations.

[Spoiler alert] There is an intriguing scene in The Watchmen, when, after the detonation of Ozymandias levels New York, an editor of a small, dilapidated office comments on the emergence of world peace as, "It's like the whole world has broken out into a goddam hippie commune." There was nothing for the editor to comment on, nothing for him to do. Man again had to turn back to the struggle with himself. The whole long mess of ordering a society that could accommodate man's creative aspirations and manage his destructive tendencies had begun anew.

The Socialist's Apprentice

2009-04-05T18:33:00.000-07:00

Warner Todd Huston of Newsbusters has written one of the best posts I've seen in a long time on the leftist bubble. I write this because this article lays bare a great avenue of attack on the soft underbelly of leftism - the need for media insulation to hot-box their opiate-laced worldview.

When the media turned the magic hat of the presidency over to the Sorcerer's Apprentice (by a slim margin in the popular vote), he predictably catered to the chants for broom-ready jobs, dumping bucket after bucket of liquidity into the economy. The consequences will soon become evident, the illusion will be dispelled with further unemployment, and the need for a responsible adult, a wise John Galt-like figure (to borrow a contemporary hero-myth), will be turned to to set things aright.

A pressing question for those at the adult table to contemplate is what any forthcoming 'even uglier turn' in America might look like: More fascism, more socialism, or both? The mainstream media disintelligentsia are obviously ill-equipped to decypher any odious events as they unfold, due to their risible Comintern-derived bromide that fascism equals "right-wing" nationalism (a point made all the more obvious with the Hayek-cum-Goldberg analysis now alive and well in the 'neoconosphere').

That is why, irony of ironies, the Iron Bubble surrounding Obama's ability to tame reality with his rhetoric was pierced when a Taepodong-2 was ever-so-gently lobbed his direction this morning during a liarside chat. Wouldn't it be a surreal twist of fate if among the blogroll of saviors of our Constitutional Republic were added Obama's rival Supreme Leaders Kim-Jong Il and Mahmoud Ahmadenijad?

Iowahawk Captures Libs in Natural Habitat

2009-04-05T15:37:00.000-07:00

From Iowahawk "One Afternoon In a Secret Corner of the Internet" (no description needed).

Your Eyes Shall Be Opened, and Ye Shall Be as Gods

2009-04-05T10:59:00.000-07:00

And the Lord God said, behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:

Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.

So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is a myth that seems to reflect the transormation of our ancestors into rational beings with free will. The Garden of Eden represents the pre-rational stage of man’s evolution. It was the allegedly idyllic state of animal-like existence. Man did not have to choose, think, decide.

When man acquired reason, his abilities and power were increased immensely. But so were his troubles. Hence the negative portrayal of the emergence of reason in the Bible. Thinking is a heavy burden, but man has no choice but to use reason – it is his only tool of survival. Since the very beginning of history, many have sought in vain to return to the animalistic state, to escape the responsibility of choice. People have tried to delegate the responsibility of thinking and deciding to some earthly or heavenly authority. This escapism is known under many names – religion, socialism, nationalism. All of these ideologies have failed.

Man should fully embrace the choice made by Eve in the Garden of Eden and truly become like a god, knowing good and evil. It is one of his two fundamental choices, the other being death. Man should transform himself and his environment to facilitate his survival and happiness and possibly even partake of the Tree of Life, which gives immortality (please don’t take this literally).

On Religion and Government in the United States

2009-04-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

In Chapter Three of Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny, he makes a forceful and articulate argument that the basis of individual rights derive from Natural Law. This "Natural Law" is not fully fleshed out, due most likely to the limited space and the manifest nature of the distillation for a popular audience. The book is footnoted, to its credit, yet I was driven to add to the discussion on what I perceive to be the views of the most important philosophers of the U.S. government, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Their views complement but do not supplant my own view, that reason and self-interest rightly understood, rooted in reality and directed to the end of promoting and preserving life, is sufficient to the task of governance for mankind. I do not take superstition and worship of the unknown to be indispensable to guide the affairs of human beings.

The first philosopher that I would bring up in supplement to Levin's argument is Thomas Aquinas, who is best remembered for attempting to reconcile Nature and God, philosophy and religion. In his day as is now, there are certainly many questions about how a good God could allow such suffering, evil and natural disaster in the world. Aquinas' theory of good and evil (that God allowed us free will as the ultimate good) unleashed man to more actively pursue the good and to design a government to counter evil (while refraining from engaging in evil itself) because men were more reconciled with the demands of the natural world and the need for action. Spinoza continued down Aquinas' path by positing that God and Nature are equivalent (the origin of the term "Nature's God" is clearly derived from his philosophy). This reconciled people to prepare for natural disasters (and wars, plagues) rather than to yield to them fatalistically out of intrinsicist superstition ("we are cursed," etc. - to see the effects of this self-defeating worldview see Russia, which only dimly experienced the Enlightenment). Aquinas and Spinoza's philosophical ideas did much to unleash the creative and productive forces of man in the Western world. Locke cultivated such theories, and, by clearing the brushes of divine right and certain paternalistic strains of Christian ideology with the idea that men are inherently born equal to other men (in a specific moral-legal sense), he was able to found a political philosophy of democratic-Constitutional governance.

Thus, drawing on these philosophers who were known to the Founding Fathers, we can more fully address the role of the U.S. government to religion. From my point of view, it seems to me that some conservatives argue against secular progressives too vehemently because the latter seem to imply that the Founding Fathers were atheistic or didn't believe there was any place for religion in society. The progressive arguments are therefore patently false and absurd, and it would be better for intelligent discussion if we could ignore them. Unfortunately progressives have no respect for the First Amendment protections of freedom of religion, so they force the issue onto Christian conservatives; who, being provoked, fight back with every shred of evidence they can find that the Founding Fathers intended Christian religion to be the basis of government. This is a bridge too far. The government was designed to defend citizens' right to practice religion according to their freedom of conscience. Secular progressives thus err in their reasoning when they distill religious speech and expression out from other forms. While the Framers would have recognized in practice the distinction between religious speech and other speech, they would have been vigilant in providing stalwart protections for both in the public forum.

I will thus make the following argument, merely to compare with Mark's, not to openly refute it, because he is delicate and specific on the matter.

Divine Providence and Nature's God are not exclusively Christian terms but Christian-deist terms inspired by such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas (crucially the Summa Theologica) and Spinoza. Rights that are "self-evident" (a term from Aquinas' Summa Theologica, linked above) derive from a "Creator," and the political ends of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inspired by John Locke (for pursuit of happiness substitute "property," see his Second Treatise on Government; crude but useful summary).

Thus having provided some philosophical context, I will proffer a short analysis of what I believe to be missing from most conversations on the matter of the relationship between religion and government in the United States.

In regards to the reference "Creator" in The Declaration of Independence, Jefferson wrote this in a letter to John Adams in 1823:

On the contrary I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces, the structure of our earth itself, with it's distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere, animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles, insects mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organised as man or mammoth, the mineral substances, their generation and uses, it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is, in all this, design, cause and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regenerator into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power to maintain the Universe in it's course and order. (Emphasis added)

After applying his faculty of reason, in which he placed much faith, Jefferson found that he had to believe in a Creator.

Thomas Jefferson's views, though important, are not the only ones to consider, of course. We also have to weigh in those of key Constitutional framer James Madison. From his Memorial and Remonstrance:

Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, "that Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence." The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable; because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also; because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. (Emphasis added.)

It seems Mark Levin might concur that this is a valid reading of an intention of Madison with the farming of the Constitution; that is, he meant to ensure in regards to religion "freedom of conscience." This passage provides what I believe to be indispensable evidence that helps to set aright many misconceptions over the intentions of our government vis-a-vis any particular religion (Madison being in some periods of his life a rather firm Christian). The following passage, I hold, drives the point home:

Because, finally, "the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his Religion according to the dictates of conscience" is held by the same tenure with all our other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature (sic); if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consult the Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the "basis and foundation of Government," it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. Either then, we must say, that the will of the Legislature is the only measure of their authority; and that in the plenitude of this authority, they may sweep away all our fundamental rights; or, that they are bound to leave this particular right untouched and sacred: Either we must say, that they may controul the freedom of the press, may abolish the trial by jury, may swallow up the Executive and Judiciary Powers of the State; nay that they may despoil us of our very right of suffrage, and erect themselves into an independent and hereditary assembly: or we must say, that they have no authority to enact into law the Bill under consideration. We the subscribers say, that the General Assembly of this Commonwealth have no such authority: And that no effort may be omitted on our part against so dangerous an usurpation, we oppose to it, this remonstrance; earnestly praying, as we are in duty bound, that the Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe, by illuminating those to whom it is addressed, may on the one hand, turn their councils from every act which would affront his holy prerogative, or violate the trust committed to them: and on the other, guide them into every measure which may be worthy of his blessing, may redound to their own praise, and may establish more firmly the liberties, the prosperity, and the Happiness of the Commonwealth. (Emphases added)

Once again, this is a discussion of the relationship between religion and government, not one on what the Founders and Framers held to be the merits of Christianity itself. It is also one on the sources of Natural Law. James Madison's private views tended toward Christianity, but he could not enforce those on his fellow citizens, thus the appeal for the sanction of government in a "Creator" and "Supreme Lawgiver of the Universe"; the last quote of Madison alludes to the idea of Nature's Law," which can be traced to Aquinas, Spinoza and Locke. Taken with the views of Jefferson, it is safe to say that the two most important philosophers of the United States government purposefully designed it to refrain from "intermeddling in religion" (Madison); they themselves held very cautious views of mixing religion and government. They did, however, establish rights as deriving from a Creator; a vital, Christian-influenced, but ultimately non-denominational, or (non-"discriminatory") precept (see also John Adams' Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, e.g.).

The Great Orator and His Leftist Cliches

2009-04-03T23:49:00.000-07:00

John Crace from UK's The Guardian has hit one out of the park with the following observation on the world's international spokesman for neomarxism, I mean, President of the United States:

Barack Obama, the World's Greatest Orator (™all news organisations), didn't exactly cover himself in glory when the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson asked him a question about who was to blame for the financial crisis. Normally word perfect, Obama ummed, ahed and waffled for the best part of two and a half minutes. Here, John Crace decodes what he was really thinking ...

Nick Robinson: "A question for you both, if I may. The prime minister has repeatedly blamed the United States of America for causing this crisis. France and Germany both blame Britain and America for causing this crisis. Who is right? And isn't the debate about that at the heart of the debate about what to do now?" Brown immediately swivels to leave Obama in pole position. There is a four-second delay before Obama starts speaking [THANKS FOR NOTHING, GORDY BABY. REMIND ME TO HANG YOU OUT TO DRY ONE DAY.] Barack Obama: "I, I, would say that, er ... pause [I HAVEN'T A CLUE] ... if you look at ... pause [WHO IS THIS NICK ROBINSON JERK?] ... the, the sources of this crisis ... pause [JUST KEEP GOING, BUDDY] ... the United States certainly has some accounting to do with respect to . . . pause [I'M IN WAY TOO DEEP HERE] ... a regulatory system that was inadequate to the massive changes that have taken place in the global financial system ... pause, close eyes [THIS IS GOING TO GO DOWN LIKE A CROCK OF SHIT BACK HOME. HELP]. I think what is also true is that ... pause [I WANT NICK ROBINSON TO DISAPPEAR] ... here in Great Britain ... pause [SHIT, GORDY'S THE HOST, DON'T LAND HIM IN IT] ... here in continental Europe ... pause [DAMN IT, BLAME EVERYONE.] ... around the world. We were seeing the same mismatch between the regulatory regimes that were in place and er ... pause [I'VE LOST MY TRAIN OF THOUGHT AGAIN] ... the highly integrated, er, global capital markets that have emerged ... pause [I'M REALLY WINGING IT NOW]. So at this point, I'm less interested in ... pause [YOU] ... identifying blame than fixing the problem. I think we've taken some very aggressive steps in the United States to do so, not just responding to the immediate crisis, ensuring banks are adequately capitalised, er, dealing with the enormous, er ... pause [WHY DIDN'T I QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD?] ... drop-off in demand and contraction that has taken place. More importantly, for the long term, making sure that we've got a set of, er, er, regulations that are up to the task, er, and that includes, er, a number that will be discussed at this summit. I think there's a lot of convergence between all the parties involved about the need, for example, to focus not on the legal form that a particular financial product takes or the institution it emerges from, but rather what's the risk involved, what's the function of this product and how do we regulate that adequately, much more effective coordination, er, between countries so we can, er, anticipate the risks that are involved there. Dealing with the, er, problem of derivatives markets, making sure we have set up systems, er, that can reduce some of the risks there. So, I actually think ... pause [FANTASTIC. I'VE LOST EVERYONE, INCLUDING MYSELF] ... there's enormous consensus that has emerged in terms of what we need to do now and, er ... pause [I'M OUTTA HERE. TIME FOR THE USUAL CLOSING BOLLOCKS] ... I'm a great believer in looking forwards than looking backwards.

Atlas Shrugged: The Movie?

2009-04-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

There is a buzz circulating on the Atlas Shrugged film currently in pre-production, slated for release in 2011.

The Rand estate has been less than cooperative in the past with studios seeking to adapt Rand's magnum opus to the screen. Encouragingly, there are some recent developments that forebode well.

The director Vadim Perlman of The House of Sand and Fog has been tapped as well as Randall Wallace as screenwriter. Wallace worked on Braveheart, an epic film that displays the talents needed to handle the task. Interestingly enough, Wallace has links to Will Smith, an actor I thought of aforehand as having the chops to play John Galt.

Which brings us to our ideal cast. I base my following picks on my reading of the novel as well as this very useful character synopsis.

Dagny Taggart - Angelina Jolie. Could reconcile the physical beauty, intellectual aloofness, and libertine emancipatory nature of the character.

Professor Robert Stadler - Keanu Reeves. Can be cold and ruthless enough.

Hank Reardon - Ed Norton. I think his presence would play off Jolie's overwhelming beauty and also his ability to display the weakness of his infidelity; he should also be slightly less attractive a character than Galt.

Francisco D'Anconia - Al Pacino (Hoo-ah!). Fiery, flamboyant, secretive and crafty. Could be the admired man for Hank and Dagny, though age is a slight problem.

John Galt - Will Smith. Has the clout to pull it off. Did a sympathetic role with Pursuit of Happyness. The Obama allusion is inescapable (he is even doing the Obama homage film), but he would actually draw more people in (boosting box office take and widening the audience) and provides a foil. It would also deflate the idea that Rand's ideology is for teenagers and white people. It is for everyone who aspires to greatness.

History: A Way to Break the Left

2009-04-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

The rhetorical tactic of accusing leftists of naivete is a time-tested one for the conservative. The trick is to get them disoriented and out of their shell of acknowledged intellectual authority.

Dropping deep historical knowledge disrupts the less obstinate leftist occasionally. For example, I provided a well-received analysis of why nationalism was wrongly linked to capitalism (crucial for them to allege that fascists are right-wingers) in a Nationalism course by explaining that "capitalism" (a term Marx invented) does not have roots in the 17th century or in Calvinism per se (such as Weber argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), or in "modernism," as the most famous current nationalism scholars like Benedict Anderson (Imagined Communities), Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism) and Eric Hobsbawm (The Invention of Tradition) argue, because capitalism is a de facto feature of human existence going back millenia and is underpinned by the natural action of trade (due to the heterogeneity of resources, climate, and cultural productivity) and currency, such as specie (salt, feathers, copper, gold, silver, etc.).

Thus there is no break or revolution in man's nature in the seventeenth century due to capitalism; because of the rapid advance of technology there was an explosion of mercantile trade driven by the improvement of transportation and communication. The engine of rapid advances in technology was the liberation of reason by individual rights (born of conflict between European principalities and the identity-awareness formation that ensued from societal disruptions during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation) and the movement toward emancipation from superstition by such men as Hobbes, Locke, Newton, Spinoza, and Francis Bacon.

An important corollary is that colonialism and imperialism are destroyed as directly linked to "capitalism" as well. Scientific advances, especially in the areas of military and nautical technology, facilitated the expansion of empires, such as the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English. Yet it would be foolish to ignore the precedents of empires in the ancient world of various types; notably those of the religious slave mentality such as Sargon I's of Akkadia, the Babylonian, the Egyptian, the Persian, and the Salucid. Significant to contrast are the "heroic" empires of Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire and the Byzantine.

The point is that there is no root cause of colonialism and imperialism inherent in capitalism; and furthermore no necessary relationship between religion and capitalism. The latter claim is a mythological construct of Marxist false consciousness; itself a tactic to discredit religion as unjust and perverse morality due to observable inequality in Christian societies (and necessarily in every other society known to man, because men are not interchangeable or "modular" as Gellner put it); and also that capitalism is based on irrational premises, as opposed to Marxist dialectical praxis, which is "scientific." (Of course it is not because Marxist dialectical "reasoning" violates Aristotle's law of non-contradiction).

Furthermore, the invention of the printing press is a crucial development for the what is termed the "modern world," but the "print capitalism" of Anderson is an obvious slur of capitalism and his analysis overlooks widespread oral traditions and downplays "sacred texts" in the ancient world that were used as inspiration by peoples whose subsequent behavior mimicked modern nationalism. The crux of misinterpretation and appreciation of the continuity of linkages between the collectivist mindsets of nationalism and ancient religion is the bromide that the French Revolution was a tour de force based on the Enlightenment. It is much more complex than that; and the liberte of egalite, fraternite and liberte was certainly relegated to the role of the tagalong little brother.

The modernist nationalism scholars thus purposefully eschew ancient irrational nationalistic behavior based on "sacred" texts such as that of the Hebrew Bible, the epic poem of Gilgamesh, the semi-sacred Odyssey and Iliad of Homer, the Koran and the oral tradition of Hadith in Islam. Anderson's argument of the origins of "modern nationalism" entails more than print capitalism per se, such as the secularization of language, which is worth considering as a transmission belt of state-driven national unification. Obviously, however, religions were communicated far and wide before "print capitalism." The elite position of the religious interpreters in the churches of Europe was eroded by the secularized language of the Guttenberg Bible and the King James edition, to concede Anderson a point, however.

Thus by emphasizing continuity over change, I indirectly work to erode the leftist's often facile and superficial reading of history. This technique jibes with the historicism of the German school, which provides some traction with the leftist worldview.

Of course, I am a believer in a universal, integrated and cohesive reality; and thus I am adamant in my view that man can coordinate moral action affirming life based on right principles in reality using reason. He is thus not helplessly bound by any deterministic historical teleology.

Here's to You Mr. Jefferson

2009-04-03T06:58:00.000-07:00

Just last night I caught a reference to "Mrs. Robinson" which led me to explore a cul de sac of the Internet with various renditions and movie clips. I was reflecting on the nostalgic nature of the ballad, and then I serendipitously ran into the above-posted video on the Mark Levin website.

The lost innocence implied in the movie scene of The Graduate when Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) expresses his love for Elaine (Katherine Ross), the daughter of Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), resonates for those who love this country.

When Elaine discovers that Benjamin and her mother have had an affair, the feelings of shame, violation and irreconcilable harm permeate their relationships. Both Elaine and her mother are bound by blood, but there is a rent between the naive curious attachment of Elaine to Benjamin and the carnal lust of her mother with Elaine's would-be lover, as made devastatingly final by Mrs. Robinson's immoral self-destructive behavior.

This feeling of being bound and betrayed is very much like patriots who have a fond love for this country, and who mean to steadily improve it, for those who are immoral, self-destructive, and corrosive to this country by seeking to rapidly and unconstitutionally "change" it - throwing us patriots necessarily back into nostalgia to cling to our love for this country. Those who are true patriots do not seek to radically remake it; those radicals are not in love with their country, they are in love with a dream and the idea of the glory they would accomplish by ushering in the impossible or the never-before-seen.

These thoughts struck me sentimentally and softened my anger at the leftists, because I felt sorry for them. But it also angered me because I am bound to them through the government they have erected since FDR. This is the meaning of liberty for me: Wise men are rewarded by their hard work and sound judgment, and fools are punished by their ignorance and desire for others to subsidize their unproductive and self-defeating ways.

I think conservatives are turning more to the mythologized past, and reinvoking gods into their pantheon. I don't disparage this melancholy and nostalgic turn, as long as it is not a flee from the hard task at hand of defeating the opposition. Of course the great men of our past can and should be turned to for inspiration. But I prefer that we correct the liberals with reproof, and not the invocation of men who they have no respect for as "authority."

In any event, I am doubtful that they are capable of listening.

The Self-Defeating Road to World Government

2009-04-02T17:42:00.000-07:00

There is palpable fear in the Zeitgeist of plans for a one world government, but there is one hope, that the heads of state are as buffoonish as they appear. I mean, look at this picture:

These people are dipshits and goons, not evil geniuses. There may be some smoke-filled rooms and true masterminds out there, but I sincerely believe, after hearing the best and the brightest from universities like Harvard, Yale and MIT, that these people are loons. They're like kids who never got a good spanking and who run around like narcissistic self-absorbed brats - they have no locus of control themselves and thus their only satisfaction in life comes from controlling others.

But from what I've read of history and concluded from discussions with my Objectivist friend ReaganX (drawing at times from Ayn Rand), the evils of the "half-baked" intellectuals' socialism are self-defeating. Evil can only flourish when it preys on the good. There is no death without life, no theft without productivity and wealth, no repression unless people naturally desire to breathe free and the government crushes their spirits and their potential for true creativity.

Socialists try to resolve the tension between human nature and society by attempting to revert man to pre-industrial existence. They seek to salve his conflicted conscience by denying that good and evil exist. Instead of reconciling themselves to living in accordance with the good: life, truth and their concord natural law; paradoxically they attempt to dialectically combine all conceptions of good and evil in a "scientific" system, attempting to relativize, equalize, and nullify them both. This is an idea that comes directly from Nietszche's nihilism, Hegelian and Marxist dialectics, and the progressive program of the turn of the 20th century. But alas life and human beings are not test tubes of reagents to be mixed and recombined until the perfect (apathetic and ambivalent) homo sovieticus is at last discovered.

People have agency, a desire to act in the world, or else there would be no civilizations at all. Civilizations do not just come from out of nowhere; men have to build them, ergo men are not "products" of civilizations (or cultures) they are a reflection of them; and civilizations are reflections of certain kinds of men. It should be added that "change" is a feature of time in space, but "progress" is not predetermined. This is an important distinction because it is evidence of man's free will - with implications for good or evil.

Modern liberals think the perfect life is a state of complete spontaneity, absolute freedom and experiential living; thus they suspend the burden of conceptions of time and the thought of death - a proxy of eternal life by thinking and allowing only "happy thoughts." But actions based on such beliefs in a state of nature would be akin to death - and in a complex civilization they lead to total breakdown and chaos. The mass behavior of self-absorption (of the solipsist kind), mindlessness, lack of perspective and dearth of foresight of modern liberals are intended to deconstruct civilization, so that a new world order can be rebuilt on the ashes.

Can this new world order be led without power and coercion, immensely concentrated at the top? No. And thus their plans will spin further out of control and they will have no choice but to abandon all hope for them (nearly impossible for the true believer, as they demonstrate over and over again) or to engage in mass repression and terror, like all men of power in history who have held utopian dreams of remaking the world into a paradise.

The ultimate conclusion is never to give up your firearms. My first NRA check is in the mail.

[Retired FBI Agent Discusses the Radical Views of Marxist, Bill Ayers & the Weather Underground - Video]

The Evolution of Liberty

2009-04-02T12:34:00.000-07:00

1. The concept of πολιτεία.

There was no liberalism in the Greco-Roman world and no concept of natural rights existed at that time. Libertas (Latin), or ελευθερία (Greek), meant the republican principle, as opposed to tyranny and barbarian despotism. If the republican principle is used only in the sense of "majoritarian" (or oligarchic) government, it hardly has anything to do with the libertarian idea of freedom. It is just a form of government where relatively many people participate, unlike an absolute monarchy. The form of government should never be confused with its "content", as it were. "Form" is never totalitarian or libertarian (though sometimes a certain form may facilitate a certain content, these are not the same). Almost any form of government (meaning mostly the number of people involved in government) can co-exist with almost any content (i.e. liberty or slavery). There can be libertarian and totalitarian monarchies, libertarian and totalitarian oligarchies or aristocracies and libertarian and totalitarian democracies.
However, Greco-Roman republicanism had several aspects that set it apart from barbarian despotic kingdoms and were clearly steps in the direction of classical liberalism. These aspects should not be confused with the majoritarian (or oligarchic) principle per se. First of all, it was the Aristotelian idea that the law, not people, should rule. Law in Greece and Rome could indeed be severe but, unlike the arbitrary rule of despots, it was predictable and at least some spheres of life were inviolate and left to the discretion of private individuals within clearly defined bounds (at least in some historic periods). Despotism (which was the predominant form outside the Greco-Roman civilization), on the other hand, left nothing unmolested and untouched by tyrants. Lawlessness has always been the chief hallmark of totalitarian governments because despots do not want anything - even the most Draconian law - to limit them. Greek and Roman governments, even at their most tyrannical, usually allowed much more scope for creative activity and the pursuit of happiness by individuals.
The idea of law as supreme is one of the defining characteristics of πολιτεία (politeia, polity), the best form of government according to Aristotle. It is rendered in Latin as respublica and is sometimes translated into English as "constitutional government" or “constitutional republic.” In a more general sense, πολιτεία is any form of government - this word is also the original Greek term for Plato's totalitarian "republic", in many ways the very opposite of Aristotle's polity. Though, as Aristotle admitted, few Greek polises fully fit the principle of πολιτεία, at least some of its features could be found in many of them.
Aristotle’s concept of natural law was a further limit on government. Not only should government respect the law but that law should also conform to nature. Aristotle did not develop this idea into its logical corollary – individual natural rights – but it was nonetheless a gigantic step forward in the development of political philosophy.
The Aristotelian insights now seem to be trivial common sense but they were an ideological revolution in his time. It should be remembered that what is now considered "common sense" was in many respects invented by Aristotle. In a style called by Cicero "a river of gold", he disentangled many logical contradictions and inconsistencies, thus making rational research possible in many sciences, including political philosophy. Plato and Aristotle correctly believed that a mere form of government (the rule of many or the rule of few) is not an end-in-itself, and sought some more essential and basic characteristic. Aristotle's idea of a "mixed" form of government and his preference for the middle class were intended to prevent arbitrary rule (it is not surprising that the idea of "mixed" government and the emphasis on the middle class have been very prominent in U.S. political discourse). Unlike Plato, Aristotle grasped the impracticability and disastrous consequences of socialism and was one of the first thinkers to present a comprehensive and explicit defense of private property. These ideas, of course, were not classical liberalism per se (indeed, in many cases Aristotle proposes solutions that are clearly violations of individual rights). However, they were the closest approximation of liberty achieved before the modern era, and at least some aspects of "individual rights" might have been implicit in them (though never explicit).
.
2. Constitutional government in Rome.

The concept of constitutional government survived well into the principate. It is interesting that Rome officially remained a "republic" even in the imperial era, and emperors and magistrates were nominally (though not de facto) appointed by the senate and popular assemblies. Emperors never aspired to the title of "rex" (king), because it was anathema to the Roman constitution. It is well-known that Roman law was the most advanced and sophisticated, which is one of the reasons why the empire expanded to such an extent and persisted for so long.
The principle of πολιτεία was abandoned during the dominate period. Law and order were rejected in favor of arbitrary rule akin to Eastern despotism. The shift was symbolized by Roman emperors' adoption of the title of dominus (lord), which had a decidedly barbarian flavor, and subsequently that of βασιλεύς (king) by Byzantine emperors. Afterwards the western Mediterranean was plunged into the Dark Ages, while the Byzantine Empire remained a despotic regime.

3. The modern revival of πολιτεία.

Both constitutional government and Roman law (along with Aristotelianism) were revived in the High Middle Ages. Magna Carta (1215), the English parliament (founded in 1258), the Spanish Cortes (1188 in Leon, 1217 in Castile, 1071 in Aragon), the French States General (1302) and municipal governments all over Europe were embodiments of the constitutional principle. It should be noted that these events were not connected with classical liberalism per se, and attempts to "modernize" them are erroneous. They were rather a revival of the Greco-Roman principle of πολιτεία/republic.
The idea of constitutional government also clearly influenced the U.S. Founding Fathers. One of the most obvious examples is James Madison's Federalist No. 10, a brilliant classic of political philosophy. Madison explains the differences between a republic and democracy in a style somewhat reminiscent of Aristotle.
The U.S. became the most perfect state in history because it fused a very advanced application of the constitutional principle with another crucial principle, that of natural rights (the key tenet of classical liberalism).
The notion of natural rights itself was a logical extension of the Greco-Roman rule of law and constitutional government, a further stage in the progress of political thought. Thomas Aquinas, the most prominent Scholastic Aristotelian, revived the natural law theory, though he did not think in terms of natural rights. Some other Scholastics (Godfrey of Fontaines, Henry of Ghent, William of Ockham), as well as Pope John XXII, however, arguably had some insights resembling the individual rights theory. The first unambigous, explicit and comprehensive theory of natural rights was developed by Spanish Thomist philosophers known as the School of Salamanca, which influenced the first classical liberal, John Locke. It seems likely that, besides the Greco-Roman heritage, the development of the free will theory by Pelagius in the fifth century and in the Scholastic period in was a major factor in the emergence of the natural rights doctrine and individualism (Greek and Roman philosophers had very vague notions about free will or none at all, and hardly concerned themselves with the issue). The doctrine of free will is often associated with the influence of Christianity but I see no evidence for this, especially considerting the deterministic tendencies of St. Augustine and even Thomas Aquinas. It is argued that Christian beliefs necessitated the idea of moral choice but I see no grounds for this because other major religions have somehow perfectly done without the idea of free will. This idea is much more likely to have been a further development of rational philosophy inherited from the Greeks at a more advanced stage.
The discovery of natural rights was one comparable to Newton’s laws of motion and Einstein’s theory of relativity. This concept allowed humanity to reach a level of prosperity dwarfing all previous ages. However, what constitutes a violation of individual rights was not yet entirely clear to liberal thinkers. That is why many of them combined classical liberalism with support for such violations of rights as taxation, public healthcare, public education, some limited state interference in the economy etc. That was one of the reasons why socialists were able to utilize liberal principles to achieve their ends, which were the very opposite of liberalism. Since the concept of rights was not clarified sufficiently, socialists re-defined it to such an extent that its very essence was defined out of it (e.g. consider the absurd construct of "social rights" and "positive rights").
A further advance in political philosophy was made by the modern libertarian movement, including Ayn Rand (though she did not like the term "libertarian"). While classical liberals used the vague "harm" principle to determine violations of rights, she discovered the principle of non-initiation of force: "In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use." Unlike the "harm" principle, the Randian formulation makes it possible to objectively define violations of rights. It is hard to predict what tremendous achievements mankind will be capable of once the Objectivist principles are implemented.

The Two American Fears

2009-04-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

America is becoming increasingly polarized into two kinds of people, each with a particular set of incompatible and mutually antagonistic fears.

The first group are the inheritors of the Enlightenment. Their "sacred text" is the Constitution, and a majority subsection of this group would include the Bible. Their shared philosophical disposition is rooted in the rational fear of government. Government is necessarily founded in violence and dedicated to coercion. The principles of private property, individualism, federalism, positive political freedoms, reason, truth, and liberty all directly divide, limit, check and balance governmental powers.

The second group are the progeny of atheistic nihilism; their sacred text is Marx's "Communist Manifesto," their reaction against vulgar social-darwinism and revivalist religion is secular progressivism in its utopian, proselytizing and occasionally millenarian mode. They are afraid of mankind losing its humanity "within" industrial society. They see self-interest as an affront and a crime against society. They see freedom as impossible in an era that emphasizes "deterministic" reality, especially the core assumption of cause and effect. They see instrumentality as the inevitable ethic of man in an age of technical-scientific progress. They reject capitalism's emphasis of "hollow" reason at the expense of what they see as the greatest in humanity - "compassion," "pity," and "charity."

Here is a list of traits I have compiled thus far on these two groups. I have portrayed the modern liberals as faithfully as possible, while providing the "rationalist" counterpoints.

Modern liberal beliefs:

They are afraid of the routinization of life in a rational economy and therefore society
They fear industrialization may lead men to become self-alienated (inhumane) automatons
They rebel against what they perceive to be "the Borg" of scientific-technical progress
They see science as inherently dangerous because it has increased the devastation of war
They see war as inherently wrong and unnecessary because all cultures and values are relative; all conflict, including war, is due to haves and have-nots; and the solution is redistribution of wealth and thus power
They reject reason or "cold calculation" as prostrate to penetrate the human psyche
They posit that reason itself cannot motivate men to live; it is lifeless
They see the emphasis of rationality in the political system as denying representation of the better side of mankind - emotion
They will vote for the "charismatic" prophet as their ideal statesman

Modern liberal actions:

They rebel against law & order
They seek to erode reason in the schools and universities (they purposefully accentuate "soft sciences," liberals "arts" and humanities rather than hard sciences and mathematics)
They seek to divide the nation into as many particulars as possible
They contradictorily emphasize equality, which is a principle anathema to reality
They claim there is no ultimate basis for "knowledge" - no first principle is acceptable, even life itself is insufficient
They create a currency, the lubrication of an economy, which has no basis in reality
They seek to strangle the "real" lifeblood of the industrial economy - energy
They desire to create a political system that is integrated and inseparable from society and the economy
They do this in the hopes that they will not feel "alienated" and separate from society
They feel that with mankind, society and nature perfectly compatible and life balanced and whole, peace and harmony will naturally ensue

Rationalists maintain that:

Reality is the ontological underpinning of life as well as civilizational growth and prosperity; if it were not, any argument over the best form of government is moot and naked power reigns - in other words, all would be sophistry and illusion, even language and communication, all art, all creativity would be impossible (rejecting that each man has internalized "divine" powers)
Reason is the means by which a man judges those actions conducive to his health, life and success and those that are conducive to decay and death
Individualism is the principle that a person must live their own life and therefore take responsibility for their own actions and thus who they are and what they become
Free will is the ability to make a decision among understood options; a man does not instinctively and automatically interact with his environment, he is able to initiate action in it, as can be demonstrated by human nature and development; the alternative of determinism is a passive, annihilating, self-defeating principle that does not correspond to the development of mankind and civilization - the positing that man develops in and through culture begs the question from whence is culture derived?; the answer is that it must be germinated in man's essence, for no thing can arise from nothing
Life and what is conducive to it is the "good; that which is against life and the safeguarding of it is "evil"
Economy is not a sum-gain proposition; firstly, the majority of economy is man's transformation of goods to add utility, man thus owning his labor and having the capacity and responsibility to initiate action, he is free to succeed or fail; second, the natural behavior of trade (arising from natural scarcity and homogeneity in resource distribution) is a spontaneous (non-coerced) behavior that is self-coordinating; third, in regards to the legal assumption of property, it tends to accrue to those who allocate it most efficiently; one cannot "have" money, lest he lose it; through time elapsing and driving him ever more toward death or through inflation (historically in a specie monetary system gold and silver finds depreciate such currency; or alternatively in a fiat system, through intentional inflation by the government-banking complex)
What is "compassionate" is what leads to a person's success as measured in terms of the dignity of them sustaining their own life, and the potentiality of a person developing their unique talents into greatness
Reason does not and cannot destroy "creativity"; creativity is meaningless without the recognition of a shared reality through which we communicate emotion and values; humanity is only intelligible and made possible through the stability of civilized life as made possible through man's use of the faculty of reason (sheer emotional spontaneity is not freedom - it is death)
Rationality cannot conquer or colonize emotions such as love, fear, sorrow and joy; it can only direct these emotions to spheres of action that are conducive to health and lifethus the love of self, love of family, love of community and love of country is a rational love; the fear of violence, fear of coercion and fear of government is a rational fear; the sorrow of death and loss is a rational sorrow; and the joy of creation in reality is a rational joy

Thus one group's behavior is motivated in rational fear to oppose the government, and the opposite side is driven by irrational fears - of individual responsibility (or loneliness), industrialism, science, reality, and reason itself - to seek absolute freedom through government.

Barackalypto

2009-04-02T02:26:00.000-07:00

Behold, and be terrified, I am the President Kukulcon, and I am come to make ritual sacrifice of your capitalist system!

There is to be no worship of all-mighty dollar before the great Kukulcon, some call me "feathered serpent" - Quetzacoatl.

Some claim I am usurper, since I be exiled by that bitch-whore Texcatlipolka, but let it be known my virgin birth to goddess Coatlikyu!

Others slur my rule by claiming I am but Uncle Rabbit to people of coyotes - lies, I tell you, sheer lies!

Kukulcon, to demonstrate all-powerful status, will now lop off corporate heads to cascade down pyramid scheme to you waiting savages below!

We will carve up business with stone knife and smear bloody tidings of redistribution on walls (this should appease populist anti-capitalist masses!)

(Ha ha! Your world will not be one bit bettered, but your blood-lust temporarily sated - you will now return to workaday lives not a penny richer, and in fact, less free!)

Behold my reign until coming to pass of dawning of Age of Obarryus! I take this name 2012 to signify our rapturous Barackalypto!

(Excuse my poor language me not have teleprompter yet!)

45 Communist Goals from U.S. Congressional Record of 1963

2009-04-01T22:36:00.000-07:00

This was taken from the book The Naked Communist by Cleon Skousen and introduced into the Congressional record by Congresswoman Nordham from Florida under unanimous consent in 1963.

Bezmenov's Synopsis (Please Watch!)

2009-04-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

The Nietzsche-KGB Connection

2009-04-01T20:27:00.000-07:00

Nietzsche was no fan of the left, though many on the left are a fan of him. They selectively read him, taking his pathos and extreme skepticism and absence of definite values (nihilism) and utilize it in the socialist utopian program of equality. They surgically extricate the "fascistic" elements of the "will to power" and the overcoming of one's self implied in the "Übermensch."

I think I have stumbled upon a very important juxtaposition, incidentally, and one I wish would get more publicity: A lecture by KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, which should be read and watched side by side. It has done more for me to understand the left than a lot of time spent reading Marx, Horkheimer, Adorno, Lenin, Gramsci, Alinsky, etc.

The reason for this is one must start with Nietzsche, which Allan Bloom discusses. For an obscenely brief synopsis, I will try to explain.

Nietzsche is lamenting that Western civilization has implemented science and reason as values. He illustrates how this will lead to the West's self-destruction unless we bring back tradition and Old religion, mythos and spirituality. When Nietzsche utters "God is dead," he is not shouting it triumphantly, he is struggling with the (imagined) consequences of this "fact." Nietzsche thus sees the Western world spiraling out of control unless men of creativity are able to rejuvenate it. This analysis of Nietzsche (via Bloom) can inform Bezmenov's discussion of subversion by the KGB.

Click on image to magnify. Poor quality is in original.

The KGB is not responsible for the collapse of American society, but it coaxed it along subtly but systematically. It is like judo, as Bezmenov describes it: you do not push back against a stronger enemy when he swings at you, you pull his fist in the direction he is going into a brick wall. It is not a coincidence that ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin is an expert at judo; it was an essential philosophy of the agency.

Thus one conclusion you get from reading Bloom and meditating on Bezmenov's lecture is that the worst enemy is ourselves and we must revitalize American traditions and culture. It begins with, as Ayn Rand put it, the word "no." What Nietzsche did not sufficiently appreciate is that American tradition is mostly rational and a product of the Enlightenment as captured in our "sacred text" - the Constitution.

(The Christian revisionism of the founding began later, with waves of Catholic and some Lutheran immigrants seeking to read into the founding and framing documents far too much in the word "Creator" and "Nature's God." Please read this excellent article Our Godless Constitution and honestly digest it before disputing this argument.)

Another conclusion is that the utopian Marxist left is a direct reaction to the godless, nihilistic Gotterdammerung of Nietzsche. The leftists are yet to find the ultimate "proof" that is the final resting place in their philosophical systems. What this "proof" might look like, they have no idea.

This philosophical angst on the left, searching and restless like Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead, leads them to construct godlike totalitarian projects for remaking the world into a heaven on earth, without any barriers set in their mind by physical reality.

It is as if they feel they are the damned children of God; hence Alinsky's homage to "the first radical" Lucifer in his Rules for Radicals. On the whole they are misguided, sad people, not malicious malcontents. The leaders of the leftist movement, however, are dangerous prime movers displaying what Freud conjectured to be "the death urge."

Point/Counterpoint New Format

2009-04-01T19:28:00.000-07:00

In the interest of the reader, Point/Counterpoint has increased the width of the blog to 1000 pixels. This will fit a 1050 px format with 50 pixels of wrapper. On a widescreen monitor this should fit perfectly, however this may not fit perfectly on a 14 inch monitor. To reduce the blog size to fit your screen press control (Ctrl) _ . To increase, press control (Ctrl) + . (If anyone knows a workaround with automatic formatting in html, please let me know).

The reason to increase the width is it facilitates speedier reading and comprehension. If one fixes one's eyes in the center of the screen and uses peripheral vision to sift through the data from left to right (without back-tracking), this should lead to an easier reading experience, better absorption of arguments,clearer interrelationships between clauses and phrases, and a better grasp of sentence syntax. For a fuller discussion of speedier and more cerebral reading, see this illuminating article by BrainQUICKEN. I have taken a speed-reading course and the argument for it is sound if one does not try to read for speed but for rapid absorption.

This change to the format is also necessary due to the average length of original post at seven to ten paragraphs. The average scroll through per post should be two to three full scrolls at most.

A speedier, more peripheral style of reading also frees the mind up to digest and critique the arguments more readily without focusing so intensely on the physical process of reading itself. Thank you for reading and participating in this forum.

Lew Rockwell: New World Disorder

2009-04-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

Gary North of the Mises Institute has produced a very good read New World Disorder regarding the hype over the G-20 summit and the unlikelihood that it will produce any substantive solutions. I certainly hope the national leaders and central bankers fail to cooperate. Last time they did we got Bretton Woods, which begat the dollar reserve system.

Hundreds of Iowans Removed From Public Hearing After Protesting Tax Plan

2009-03-31T23:25:00.000-07:00

A rumbling of things to come in our parliaments of whores?

BREAKING NEWS: Hundreds of Iowans thrown out of public hearing

By JASON CLAYWORTH
jclayworth@dmreg.com

More than 500 people who are upset with a plan to change Iowa's tax laws were cleared from a hearing tonight at the Iowa House after they interrupted multiple times.

House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, cleared the crowd at about 8:30 p.m. The decision brought about loud protests as the crowd was escorted from the chambers by Iowa State Patrol officers.“This is the most atrocious thing I’ve seen in the history of the 15 years I’ve been a lobbyist. Pat Murphy has acted like a jack-booted Nazi,” said Ed Failor Jr., president of Iowans for Tax Relief, a conservative taxpayers’ rights group from Muscatine with 50,000 members..

Failor Jr. was escorted from the House chambers after Murphy overheard him speak with the media.

House rules say that no protesting or advocating can be done in the House.

Murphy said he should have ordered the chambers cleared much sooner than he did, since several of the speakers were booed.

“The idea behind the public hearing is to give people public input and allow people the ability to speak for and against the bill. This is not an athletic event,” Murphy said.

After the majority of the public was removed, the scheduled speakers were allowed to continue. The hearing is scheduled to last until about 9:45 p.m.

The proposal, House File 807 and Senate Study Bill 1317, would end a practice known as federal deductibility. That means Iowans could no longer subtract what they pay in federal income taxes from their income when figuring their state taxes.

Ending federal deductibility without changing anything else would mean Iowans would pay an estimated $595 million more in taxes. However, Democrats have proposed a plan that would instead lower the state income tax rates and increase certain tax credits to offset the increase.

Democrats have maintained that two-thirds of Iowans would either see a tax savings or no change at all in their taxes due to the proposal.

Specific numbers show that 49 percent of Iowans who file taxes would get a break in the current tax year, while about 18 percent would see no change.

The remainder – 450,292 people – would see a tax increase, according to the Iowa department of Revenue and Finance.

Criminals: Legal and Illegal

2009-03-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

The Government cannot be concerned any longer with outmoded penological theories. Cram criminals together and see what happens. You get concentrated criminality, crime in the midst of punishment. Soon we may be needing all our prison space for political offenders. (…) Common criminals like this unsavoury crowd can best be dealt with on a purely curative basis. Kill the criminal reflex, that's all. Full implementation in a year's time. Punishment means nothing to them, you can see that. They enjoy their so-called punishment. They start murdering each other.
(Anthony Burgess, the Clockwork Orange)

Do you see a certain pattern in the Obama administration releasing murderous terrorists from Gitmo and being “humane” to Islamofascist thugs on the one hand and increasingly violating the natural rights of innocent citizens on the other hand? Maybe it also needs to free up some space for political offenders? It seems to be a general law that governments that bully and butcher innocent people are not concerned with punishing criminals and even have a perverse affection for them. It's not surprising that legal thugs feel an affinity with illegal ones.

The Principles of Subversion

2009-03-31T06:10:00.000-07:00

Yuri Bezmenov (aka Tomas Schumann) presents a lecture on Soviet strategy and KGB tactics of subversion. [1 of 7] The lecture is informative to say the least.

Unmasking the Red Death

2009-03-30T10:55:00.000-07:00

Strange days are upon us. President Stanley Mouch, strike that, Barack Obama recently bullied GM exec Rick Wagoner into "early retirement," a Randian move if there ever was one. As for the Rock Star-in-chief, he has dashed off to Europe with an entourage of special effects people to discuss the "new international economic order" over watercress sandwiches and perrier. The G-20 meeting will certainly draw hordes of ideologically confused stragglers, wielding placards and demanding their cut of the "punch and pie."

If this wasn't enough cause for concern in workaday Middle America, there is serious contemplation by the world's central bankers and elite statesmen of adopting an IMF-administered international reserve currency made up of a "market basket" of currencies. To most people, a market basket is what you use to carry your eggs and cheese. Trying to figure out what a ten-spot will be worth under such a system will be equivalent to doing calculus with an abacus.

Add to this a a multi-trillion dollar global environmentalist program on the table at the UN, which is certainly the most ambitious program of "remaking the world in the left's image" that has ever been (publicly) uttered. The rhetoric of "cap and trade" will more aptly become "trade and cap" - trade us your wallet or we'll bust a cap in your ass.

And talks in the works of a "Global New Deal," trillions of dollars in spending unmatched by production, are ominous to those of us who have actually read what the New Deal is and how it did not work.

It may seem like friends of freedom are few and far between in such economic times. Yet warnings of the Masque of the Red Death are coming in from the unlikeliest of places.

Already famous for its surreal quality is former Russian president Vladimir Putin's reaction upon learning of Barack Obama's massive stimulus proposals:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise "excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence".

"In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute," Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated."

In the interim from that ironic observation, Russia has lent further lip service to capitalism with a proposal that would add weight to an international reserve currency by including gold in its currency basket. This is a hedge to international fiat on the seemingly inevitable path to globalist integration, but at least the Russians used the g-word at the big people's table.

Then we have the rare spectacle of a German Chancellor chiding the Prime Minister of England for his illiberal suggestion of a "Global New Deal." Angela Merkel dispelled the illusion that America and Britain will bully all other countries into insane spending programs with a single word - "No!"

Much like John Galt argues in his famous speech, all it takes to break the spell of the politician and to see the ugliness of power unmasked is this one simple word - "no."

Why our spiraling into international socialism needs unmasked is a paradox itself. The false promises of socialists should be engraved in the consciousness of every human being after the nightmares of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, Cambodia and North Korea. Yet these dystopias are never taught in our universities as evil and are even apologized for or dismissed as anomalies.

This vacuum of knowledge in academia about what international socialism really is allows Obama to conduct himself as a "bridge" over which the assorted dictators of every disparate regime can walk. Obama intends to use the United States as an engine of global integration, at the expense of our prosperity and national sovereignty. This is all to the benefit of Obama's ego, as apparently the United States is not enough for him to preside over.

I thus expect that Obama's European tour will look to communicate and establish the "new rules of the game" - that the U.S. no longer has the desire to be a superpower. China and Russia are more than willing to step into that role.

We cannot allow the Marxist tide to overwhelm us without a fight. We must forestall and obstruct the leftists' plans until we can challenge them in peaceful elections. The sands of the hourglass continue to trickle out, the Sword of Damocles waves suspended over our head, and we are racing against the clock as in The Pit the Pendulum.

Perhaps the prose of Edgar Allen Poe comes so readily to mind because his narratives of time and horror are so poignant and immediate. Such are the eerily timely words of Poe on the death of Prince Prospero in The Masque of the Red Death:

And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

Before we extinguish our flames and yield to the Red Death we must symbolically hold aloft our dagger to the tyrant as Prince Prospero and Brutus before him. The Republic stands at the precipice and we stare into the void. The void indeed stares back, yet we must hold fast to reality, to our right ideal of humanity.

As humane people, we conservatives know that compassion without responsibility is the path to destitution; that civic responsibility without a sense of self-esteem is a recipe for slavery; that fulfilling the human potential in each of us by appealing to the heroic in our nature is a greater boon to prosperity than the doldrums of comfortable stagnation. We reject the false promises of a utopian world and the dangerous charlatans who make them.

We must freely choose the spirit of liberty, and reaffirm our commitment to a model of personal responsibility and prosperity or we shall suffer civilizational death. The collectivists are the true alienators of man from himself, and as such we must free ourselves from their icy grip in order to rescue the dignity of ourselves and mankind.

NRO: Democracy in Europe

2009-03-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

Democracy in Europe
It’s lethargic and uninspiring — and ours could be like it soon.

By Alexander Benard [Available at National Review Online]

In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville published the first volume of his magnum opus, Democracy in America. The book was designed to give Europeans a feeling for American politics and society, a topic of interest to Europeans in part because of their general fascination with the United States, a new and perplexing country an ocean away. But more significantly, Europeans were curious to learn about the U.S. political system and its societal implications, because many Europeans were thinking about a transition from monarchy to democratic governance. The United States could show them what they would be getting themselves into.

Today the roles are reversed, and it is the United States that can benefit from a transatlantic lesson. With his stimulus bill and his 2009 budget, President Obama has proposed sweeping changes to our political and economic system that would move the United States squarely in the direction of a social-welfare state. America has no experience with such a system — but Europe does. Americans must learn from our brethren across the Atlantic how social-welfare states operate, and what impact social welfarism has had on European society.

President Obama’s stimulus and budget represent unprecedented interventions in the areas of health care, education, and the economy. The budget creates a $634 billion reserve fund to overhaul health care. Obama will use this money to offer a government-run health-care plan, similar to the plan that is available to members of Congress, that people can join voluntarily. The plan will be offered at a generously subsidized rate, so that over time, more and more people will move from private health insurance to this government program. The end result will almost certainly be a nationalization of our health-care system. The budget also establishes various federal grants and guarantees that would set the United States on the path toward tuition-free college education. The stimulus bill, meanwhile, provides billions of dollars to particular projects and industries, thereby picking winners and losers in the private economy — a role usually played by the free market.

To Americans, all of this is unfamiliar and may seem largely innocuous. But Europe affords us an opportunity to see where these policies lead, and the picture is an extremely disturbing one.

Regarding health care: In Great Britain, 100,000 operations are canceled every year because of the need for rationing. In Sweden, patients must sometimes wait 25 weeks to make an appointment for heart surgery. When patients in these countries finally do obtain care, they often find themselves subjected to technologies that have long since been rendered obsolete. These outcomes are not peculiar to Europe; they occur in every country where the government controls access to health care and regulates everything from the price of drugs to the salaries of doctors. These interventions drive down the supply of high-quality health care while driving up demand, thereby creating painful shortages. They also destroy the incentive to innovate, thus limiting the potential for technological advances that cut costs and save lives.

We see a similar pattern in European education systems. Austria and Germany, for example, have made universities essentially free for all students. As a result, far too many students apply to universities every year, which leads to crowded classrooms and professors who cannot devote individual attention to their students. On top of that, the federal government imposes caps on the number of students who can pursue certain oversubscribed fields of study. All of this might be worth it if it enabled deserving students to obtain university degrees they otherwise could not afford. Unfortunately, however, it is far more common for students to remain enrolled for years and years, trying one field and then another, with no sense of urgency or purpose. The atmosphere in the classroom suffers, with students failing to take their academic responsibilities seriously. Why would they, when everything is delivered to them at no cost? This is part of the reason why ambitious Europeans routinely come to the United States for higher education.

Part of the argument in favor of Obama’s stimulus plan was that America’s infrastructure supposedly lags far behind that found in Western European countries, notably Germany. To the extent that this is true, there should be no illusions about why: Large sums of money are taken from Germans so that their government can build grandiose airports, fancy trains, and extravagant government buildings. This means the average German is left with less discretionary income, which is why middle-class Germans have smaller homes than Americans, more limited personal savings, and less money to spend on entertainment, housing, and food. The German system is a reallocation of wealth from the people to the government. Government ends up with more, so government-funded projects look nicer; people end up with less, so they do not live as well or have as many economic choices and opportunities as citizens in economically freer countries.

Far more pernicious than all of this, however, is the effect that these policies have had on the European psyche. The most recent example has been seen over the last few months, when countries around the world were debating how to respond to the collapsing global economy. In the United States, Americans greeted the passage of the stimulus bill in February with mixed feelings; the notion that federal government is best positioned to turn around an ailing economy is not yet universally accepted in the United States. In France, by contrast, hundreds of thousands of workers marched through the streets to demand that the government spend more money, create more jobs, and fund more programs to address the economic crisis. There is nothing in French DNA that makes them more likely to feel dependent upon the government for help in tough times. Rather, it is the cumulative effect on the French psyche of years of quasi-socialism.

The psychological impact of the welfare state is evident in other areas as well. When the German government was exploring the idea of imposing modest annual fees for students at universities, the students protested — at times violently. They viewed themselves as entitled to free university education and were unwilling even to consider the idea that fees might have positive effects (such as allowing universities to modernize their facilities and weeding out students who have no genuine interest in pursuing a higher education). Similarly, a German proposal to introduce a 10-euro ($13) co-pay for certain doctor visits was met with popular outrage. Once government creates the expectation that it will provide a service free of cost, it is almost impossible to reverse course.

The effect of all this is to stifle independent thought — precisely the kind of thought that results in a vibrant private sector, fueled by creative entrepreneurship. Such entrepreneurship becomes increasingly less relevant in the public’s eye as the federal government, not the free market, makes the critical decisions on which products, ideas, and projects merit attention and funding.

It is perhaps in old age when the discrepancy between the American and the European becomes most marked. After a lifetime of personal achievement — of experiencing the full range of risks and rewards afforded by the American marketplace, of having made his own decisions, developed his likes and dislikes, paid for his education, paid for his children’s education, paid for his house, and saved for his retirement — the American retiree exudes an unmistakable confidence, happiness, and sense of accomplishment. But the European retiree has been stripped by the government of the opportunity to experience that same feeling. It was the government that put his children through college and that now pays his pension. Having paid excessive taxes throughout his life, the European retiree usually has not amassed personal wealth or had the opportunity to purchase a significant parcel of property. He has never truly had to rely on himself and those close to him, because he has always known that the government would be there for him — like it or not — should he ever need help.

Some may think this an enviable prospect, but one brief look at the average European retiree tells a different story. The human spirit does not respond well to dependence. It withers. The freedom to make choices, to succeed and stumble on our own merits, the hardiness that comes from having to rely on ourselves — these are the things that make us whole. And that, really, is the most cautionary part of this tale: Americans must resist the creeping welfare state, lest we lose not only our quintessential Americanism, but ultimately also some unquantifiable measure of our humanity.

— Alexander Benard, a New York attorney and regular contributor to National Review Online, lived in Europe for eight years.

Townhall.com: How to Cure Your Daughter's STD

2009-03-30T08:46:00.000-07:00

by Mike Adams, Criminology Professor at UNC-Wilmington [Available at Townhall.com]

Dear Steve:

Thanks for writing me with your concerns about your daughter’s recent visit home from college. I don’t have a daughter but I can understand the concern you have after seeing such dramatic changes in her after just six months at a public university. After all, you didn’t save money for eighteen long years in order to pay someone to teach her to despise the values you taught for, well, eighteen long years.

First of all, I want you to understand that many of the crazy ideas you hear your daughter espousing are commonplace on college campuses. Nonetheless, it must have been shocking for you to hear that she supported Barack Obama in the last election principally because of his ideas about “the redistribution of wealth.” I know you were also disappointed to hear of her sudden opposition to the War on Terror and her sudden embrace of the United Nations. Most of all, I know you are disappointed that she has stopped going to church altogether.

Now that your daughter is not going to church it will be easier to get her to accept other policies based on economic and cultural Marxism. Socialist professors like the fact that average church attendance drops dramatically after just one year of college. God and socialism are simply incompatible. One cannot worship both Jesus Christ and Karl Marx.

But there is good news, Steve. I think I can implement a program that will cure your daughter’s Socialist Teaching Disorder (STD) in just a few short days. In case you were wondering, I define STD as the sudden infatuation with socialism brought on by exposure to pro-socialist ideas without a corresponding exposure to anti-socialist ideas. Although not recognized by the APA, this emotional disorder is running rampant at American universities.

The solution to your daughter’s STD is to be found in your decision to award her a sum of $4000 if she returns from her freshman year with a 3.5 GPA or above. Previously, you explained to me that you decided to do this for two reasons: 1) Your daughter had earned a $4000 scholarship, which meant you had the extra money, and 2) Your only son had gone to college five years ago and flunked out after one year.

Now that your daughter has maintained a 3.6 GPA (so far) you are happy. But you are unhappy that you are about to reward her newfound love of socialism when you had only intended to reward her studiousness. I have a solution that involves three steps. If you follow these steps (in order) we’ll have this little problem cured in no time:

1. When your daughter returns from college in early May (presumably with a GPA over 3.5) I want you to tell her that you lied. Put simply, when she asks about her $4000 just tell her that you never really had any intention of delivering on your promises.

This revelation will, no doubt, cause significant consternation and outrage. But when she protests, simply point out that her choice for president, Barack Obama, also lied to her. Note that his lies about earmarks and line-by-line analysis of the budget will probably end up costing her more than $4000. She might say, “But you’re my father.” If she does, respond by saying “But I’m not your president.” If things get too uncomfortable, just tell her the $4000 promise was technically “last year’s business.”

2. When your daughter has cooled down somewhat from the realization that her father is a confessed liar I want you to strike again. Since your son, now 23, still lives at home it will be possible for you to implement step two in the presence of both children. This step will involve simply taking out your wallet and writing a $2000 check to your son.

This action will, no doubt, cause even more consternation and outrage for your daughter. She may well point out that her brother is unemployed. She may also point out that he has been in rehab twice and that he once punched you in the face while under the influence of drugs. But, when she protests, simply say that it was Barack Obama who taught you to reward failure.

She may well say “But that’s half of the money I was supposed to get.” If so, point out that it is Barack Obama who would like to take other people’s money – at least half, if not more – and use much of it to reward bad behavior. By this time, she will probably hate socialism and the lesson will have saved you a lot of money.

But, just in case the point is not yet made, there is a third step to my plan. And this is where I get actively involved.

3. I’m going to take your daughter and the remaining $2000 - in the form of one hundred $20 bills – to the “hood.” Specifically, I am going to take her to places where crack cocaine is sold here in Wilmington in the middle of the afternoon. This will include grocery stores and actual crack houses. Don’t worry about your daughter’s safety as I will be armed with a .357 magnum loaded with 145-grain silver tipped hollow point bullets. When I approach a crack head I will first ask whether he paid income taxes last year. If he says “no” I will hand him $20.

If your daughter asks me why I give money to people who don’t pay taxes I’ll remind her that this is what President Obama does. Then I’ll ask her if she still believes in “spreading the wealth” without regard to individual merit.

By the end of the afternoon, I can guarantee your daughter will be cured of her STD. Sorry if I sound overly optimistic, Steve. I got my optimism from the same place I got my love of capitalism. I learned it from Ronald Reagan, not Barack Obama.

1st Century Hippies

2009-03-30T01:31:00.000-07:00

[25] Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

[26] Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

[27] Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

[28] And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

[29] And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

[30] Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

[31] Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

[32] (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

[33] But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

[34] Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Isn't this a striking example of the range-of-the-moment welfare mentality and something akin to the unthinking daze of modern hippies? Christ advises people to "take no thought" for their lives, not to think about tomorrow and to let God (or its modern substitute, the welfare state) take care of them.

Lord's Prayer: the Obama Version

2009-03-29T18:59:00.000-07:00

Our Father which art at the White House, hallowed be thy name.
Thy presidency come, thy will be done, on Main Street as it is on Wall Street.
Give us this day our daily welfare and forgive us our debts, ‘cause we don’t wanna pay ‘em.
And lead us not into productive activity, but deliver us from work.
For thine is the presidency, and the nice limo, and the perks, for ever. Amen.

America Getting More and More Randian

2009-03-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

It has been noted numerous times of late that America, indeed the world, is getting seriously Orwellian. Now the Obama administration has pressured Rick Wagoner to step down as CEO of GM. As I finish the last chapters of Atlas Shrugged the parallels between what is happening in the U.S. and the novel are too striking to go unnoticed. Perhaps we should use the term Randian to describe such bullying government takeovers of industry?

Obama's Sermon on the Mount

2009-03-29T18:06:00.000-07:00

Blessed are the ignorant: for theirs is the White House.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall mourn the death of America.

Blessed are the taxpayers: for they shall inherit the federal debt.

Blessed are they which do not want to work: for they shall be given wealth taken away from them which do.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be bullied and shut up.

Blessed is the IRS: for it shall do the bullying and the shutting up.

Blessed is the Fed: for it shall have a lot of printing to do.

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see Obama, the first African American tyrant of the United States.

The Cultural Conflict between Reason and Mysticism in the Gospel of Matthew

2009-03-29T17:13:00.000-07:00

Matthew describes a curious encounter between John the Baptist, Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were a Hellenized Jewish sect with clear rational and this-wordly tendencies. In particular, they rejected the existence of afterlife. John the Baptist himself was probably an Essene. The Essenes and Pharisees, unlike the Sadduccees, believed in afterlife, rejected Hellenistic influence and had irrational, apocalyptic and mystical tendencies (with Essenes being more mystical and irrational). Christianity was deeply influenced by the Essenes and (to a lesser extent) the Pharisees (despite the New Testament’s criticism of the latter).

[7] But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?[

[8] Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance:

[9] And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

[10] And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

[11] I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire:

[12] Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

As you can guess, every rational man should be on the side of the Sadducee “vipers” against the Essenes, John the Baptist and Christianity in this cultural conflict. The “chaff” John was speaking of would be burned “with unquenchable fire” several hundred years later. That "chaff" is reason. “He that cometh after me” would be on the banner of the those who would plunge the Greco-Roman world into the abyss of savage mysticism, ushering in the Dark Ages.

Reason Under Attack from Tyranny and Fanaticism

2009-03-29T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Great Library of Alexandria, along with the related Museum of Alexandria, (both founded in the early third century BC) was the world’s greatest and most advanced scientific research center and the brightest crown jewel in the diadem of the Hellenic spirit. Alexandria gradually replaced Athens as the preeminent cultural center of the Greek (and subsequently Greco-Roman) civilization in the last centuries BC.

Unfortunately, the establishment of the great library coincided with the beginning of the intellectual corrosion that subsequently led to the slow death of the Greco-Roman world – first of all, the emergence of academic skepticism. This, in turn, resulted in the demise of the library.

There are many contradictory accounts of the library’s destruction, and it is not clear which of them are true. It seems likely that the library’s destruction was a gradual process, since parts of the library were located in different buildings.

The demise started when Ptolemy VIII, king of Egypt, expelled many eminent scholars working at the library, including Aristarchus of Samothrace and Apollodorus of Athens, in the mid-2nd century BC. The first part of the library’s collection was allegedly burned during the conquest of Egypt in 48 BC by Caesar. It is not clear whether tyranny in Hellenistic kingdoms and imperial tyranny in Rome resulted from the first signs of intellectual decay but it seems to be a viable hypothesis.

Some other parts of the library were destroyed during the conquest of Alexandria by another tyrant, emperor Aurelian, in the 270s AD.

The part of the library housed in the Serapeum temple was reportedly destroyed in 391 after emperor Theodosius entrenched Christian fanaticism as the official state cult, issued a decree to destroy pagan temples and started persecuting heretics. It is noteworthy that Theodosius both dealt a blow to the Library of Alexandria, which embodied the perfection of the human intellect, and abolished the Olympic Games, the magnificent hymn to the perfection of the human body. The proud, healthy and rational man of the Greco-Roman world made way for the crouching leper of the Christendom.

The remaining part of the library reportedly fell victim to the Islamofascist horde that conquered Egypt in 641-654. Commenting on the event, Caliph Omar said: “(the books in the library) will either contradict the Qur'an, in which case they are heresy, or they will agree with it, so they are superfluous.”

MSNBC With Subtle Framing of Sarah Palin

2009-03-29T10:48:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

The Employee Free Choice Act: Cutting Through the Orwellian Spin

2009-03-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

Unions are quite braggadocios of their accomplishments, even claiming that their incessant whining and rabble-rousing led to an increase in the American standard of living.

Now as modern liberals push the Orwellian-named Employee Free Choice Act, or card check, a correction to their imaginary record of accomplishment is needed.

While Marx predicted that wages would drive workers to the point of starvation in Western industrialized states, the exact opposite happened - the average standard of living continued to increase. Why is this?

Union officials would want you to believe that without them and their unions, wages would stagnate and workers would get squeezed. But their Marxist-based argument displays an Old World conception of the bourgeoisie, who were originally landed aristocracy shifting to industrial production in order to preserve their privileged status in society (the word comes from the German burgher, a wealthy land-owner).

Marxist theory is inadequate to anticipate the development of various economies due to its historical and universalistic first principles, yet Marx's agenda to "liberate" the working class continues to hang like a spectre over our economy. For example, Marx was unable to anticipate that his vaunted revolution would take place in the most backward, late-industrializing major power of Europe - Russia (he had predicted England). This major flaw led to the neomarxist Frankfurt School, which preserved the agenda of Marx but led to an attack on 'bourgeois society' on the cultural front. The Frankfurt School's sustained attack perpetuated the socialist mythos, including the flawed economic suppositions.

One major reason the standard of living did improve in the United States is when certain industrial goods like the automobile began mass-production, the desire to maximize profit led industrialists to offer prices that were steadily more affordable and to increase wages that could support those prices. Thus powerful industrialists could, in effect, pay themselves by raising wages. For example, Henry Ford in 1914 announced a five-dollar day, which was an overnight doubling of wage rates (note that the UAW had organized only in 1935).

The explosion of the automobile production age coincided with the founding of the Federal Reserve Bank, which injected massive amounts of liquidity into the system. The rationale provided was that it would prevent the dramatic ups and downs of the market such as the (fabricated) 1907 market panic that Bernanke recently referred to in Congressional hearings.

A further rationale was accounting for the massive value being added to the economy through advanced industrial techniques like mass production. If the Fed would not have intervened, so the argument goes, poorer people in agricultural and low-paying service sector jobs might have been "frozen out" of buying the new industrial goods being produced, closing the throttle on the burst of the new industries and leading to a less than maximal standard of living.

But the effects of the massive injection of liquidity were not a uniform rising of the tide across the board, and eventually this led to rapid investment in the rising industry sectors and a "bubble," a result of what some Austrian economists have termed "malinvestment." (This also leads to what they call the Austrian Business Cycle.)

The point is, about the early 1970s, with American automobile production on the wane, the Fed began injecting more money supply by lifting us once and for all off of the gold standard. But this was not in reaction to a new industrial boom, and a massive influx of added value, but ostensibly due to a rush on gold from European banks.

The Fed has subsequently become more unbridled with its money supply injections, at the same time as the U.S. has seen a decline in manufacturing and construction jobs (i.e. the production of durable goods) and a rise in service sector jobs. Many service sector workers add value through their organization or administration of production or finances, but many are government , government-financed or subsidized workers whose jobs are unable to be sustained by the market (in other words, in terms of what people want and are willing to pay for).

To argue that education jobs, for example, would be scrapped if the market had its way is a fallacy. A free market does not mean that natural sentiments such as parental love and concern for children goes by the wayside. But privatizing education would mean less job security for poisonous professors and more choice for parents who would prefer their children were not systematically indoctrinated into loving a certain political party, or even particular politicians.

The main point is that the U.S. economy has witnessed declining value being added to the system and increasing liquidity over the last several decades. The result is, especially from 1987 on, a large disparity between economic figures such as the DJIA and economic reality (as measured by growth in money-supply adjusted GDP, e.g.). Even the Internet revolution is not enough to account for the addition of "wealth," even as it makes businesses incredibly more efficient. Internet business itself is not "production," in the sense that it produces durable goods, but it does stimulate consumption. The Keynesian economic models do not significantly account for such an economic revolution.

We are a heavily debt-financed consumption-driven economy. What we need is to stimulate real production by lowering capital gains and corporate taxes. We need to incentivize adding more value to the economic system through production, which is the transformation of goods, in order to stem the tide of rampant inflation. This means no more throwing imaginary cash down a black hole. This also means stopping union goons from being "community-organized," with the ultimate goon-in-chief being the president himself.

David in the Age of PC

2009-03-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

Here it is - an illustration of what the Western civilization used to be like and what it has become.

Explaining to Republicans Why They Lose and How Libertarian Views Can Help

2009-03-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

There are many in the Republican party who view libertarians with mistrust because they are held up in the popular culture as a kook fringe, and because their national security views range from the neo-isolationist (the faux "consensus" against this idea was erected after World War II) to the conspiracy-laden anti-internationalist.

This image of the "kook" is indelibly engraved in their minds because the stragglers from society who want to feel special, and having no other reason except wanting to smoke dope, in other words the real "kooks," latch onto it and claim it as their own. Yet there is no way in hell Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, Ludwig von Mises or F.A. Hayek would want to be associated with such freaks.

The trouble with conservatism is that it picks fights in the cultural realm in a way libertarians disapprove of. The libertarian point of view may be perceived as prostrate against an aggressive, lying, cheating, conniving enemy like the left, which controls the education system. But if reason and science were better taught, then libertarianism would be more popular. There is so much junk in people's heads they are yanked around like toys by the leftists. This problem can be directly tied to government-run education. Normal people who want to succeed do not choose an education of civilizational suicide.

One problem with "conservatives" that libertarians try to redress is that they get suckered into trying to wield religion as a cudgel. Religion is a faith system and has no special appeal in rational public discourse. This is the single best explanatory reason why Republicans continually defeat themselves. This is also why when conservatives fight back with religion it is called "reactionary."

This country was founded with a clear intent to prevent the dominance of religion over the government (read Jefferson and Madison, particularly). But many people will not tolerate any religion in the public sphere, which is a completely wrong-headed misreading of the founding. Christians despise the drive to secularize the public sphere, rightfully, because their freedom of expression rights are often violated and because they feel it is their special mission to prepare the earth for Christ's return. Thus there is no way to reconcile conservatives and "secular progressives" who tend to be atheists, agnostics or extreme skeptics. There are left-leaning moderate "liberals" (socialists) who are Christian and see the possibility of using the coercive power of government to do "charity" work. Libertarians reject this point of view as an absurdity.

When Christian conservatives try to use government to defend against the left's attacks, this send an alert to the "tolerant" middle, who may perceive the left's attacks as justified in the interest of so-called "tolerance." Libertarians also disapprove because they want the foundations of government, and eventually society, to be placed on reason.

Libertarians try to ignore the religious right and engage the liberals on the ground of reason, but the liberals are just as bereft of reason as religious fanatics are (not all Christians who are capable of compartmentalization). It is not a matter of whether Christianity is right or wrong, libertarians argue that people can believe whatever they want to as long as they suffer the consequences for their own actions. They also believe government should be run by reason not by faith.

The cultural realm is the open forum for all ideas, rational and irrational; as long as individual rights are protected, including property, then the spill-over effects of irrational behavior is contained. Libertarians emphasize the rational and make peace with the irrational by relegating it to individuals who can succeed or fail on their own. The goal is that eventually people will realize that living irrationally is stupid and self-defeating, and that there is a proper time and place to let imagination and creativity roam free.

Unfortunately, the linkages between creativity, imagination and myth and behavior are not well-understood, though their negative consequences better so. Thus the libertarian understanding of the sources of irrationality and its desire may be insufficient, as they themselves reject it outright.

Instead the libertarians offer a way out of constant submission to irrational cultural warfare by saying that one must accept certain basic premises in order to accept life. The first is, as Ayn Rand put it, that "existence exists." The second is that one (as opposed to inanimate objects) must choose to live, and life means adapting to reality. The third, the instrument for apprehending how to live in reality is reason.

Libertarians thus do not understand the appeal of any collectivism, even religion, because any collectivism is an artificial construct of the imagination. They conclude that it is the special task of man to conquer himself, in other words, to rectify the negative impact of irrationality, through self-awareness and understanding of the world.

The philosophical alternative to accepting reality is a source of weakness and the cause of our civilizational destruction by reality. The enforcement of individual rights, as guaranteed by a constitution that is the special mandate and restriction of government, is the protection from the social darwinistic deviances of violence and theft, both of which war against civilization itself.

Apocalypse Meow

2009-03-27T06:14:00.000-07:00

You might get a kick out of this, D.C. Houghton. It will be in American theaters soon.

Tyrannical Demagogue Obama vs Law and Justice

2009-03-27T02:20:00.000-07:00

This quote from Aristotle's Politics is quite applicable to Reichskanzler Adolf Obama's rape of the U.S. constitution.

A fifth form of democracy, in other respects the same, is that in which, not the law, but the multitude, have the supreme power, and supersede the law by their decrees. This is a state of affairs brought about by the demagogues. For in democracies which are subject to the law the best citizens hold the first place, and there are no demagogues; but where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. For the people becomes a monarch, and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals, but collectively. Homer says that 'it is not good to have a rule of many,' but whether he means this corporate rule, or the rule of many individuals, is uncertain. At all events this sort of democracy, which is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honor; this sort of democracy being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms of monarchy. The spirit of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the demos correspond to the edicts of the tyrant; and the demagogue is to the one what the flatterer is to the other. Both have great power; the flatterer with the tyrant, the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are describing. The demagogues make the decrees of the people override the laws, by referring all things to the popular assembly. And therefore they grow great, because the people have all things in their hands, and they hold in their hands the votes of the people, who are too ready to listen to them. Further, those who have any complaint to bring against the magistrates say, 'Let the people be judges'; the people are too happy to accept the invitation; and so the authority of every office is undermined. Such a democracy is fairly open to the objection that it is not a constitution at all; for where the laws have no authority, there is no constitution. The law ought to be supreme over all, and the magistracies should judge of particulars, and only this should be considered a constitution. So that if democracy be a real form of government, the sort of system in which all things are regulated by decrees is clearly not even a democracy in the true sense of the word, for decrees relate only to particulars.

A Top U.S. Intel Officer Says Mexico Not in Danger of Becoming 'Failed State'

2009-03-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair has stated that Mexico is not in danger of becoming a failed state.

There have been numerous recent news reports of rampant open conflict between narco-trafficking gangs and the Mexican government.

Hillary Clinton, in deft diplomatic form, blamed the United States for inciting much of this violence through its demand and consumption of illegal drugs.

Predictably, Secretary Clinton used the Mexican "crisis" to call for stricter assault weapons bans. CBS obediently reported of the (negative) impact of U.S. guns on the Mexican drug war.

Disturbingly, the Christian Science Monitor reports that spring break vacations to Cancun are about the same as last year's, despite a recent State Department warning. The article reports that there have been few run-ins with any trouble, and mainly with corrupt law enforcement officials themselves.

The State Department may be becoming a politicized house organ for the administration to accomplish it's domestic agenda. This is compatible with the thesis of the leftist German historicist Wehler of the Primat der Innenpolitik (primacy of the domestic).

Glen Beck and Ron Paul Comment on MIAC

2009-03-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

Right-Wing Extremist Manzullo: Not One of You Can Give Me a Yes or No Answer

2009-03-26T11:53:00.000-07:00

Right-Wing Extremist Bachmann Asks for Accountability from Treasury and The Fed

2009-03-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

Game On

2009-03-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

A friend recently tipped me off to the 2009 MIAC report on "militias" from the state of Missouri (where I grew up and still visit often). In short, the MIAC report highlights who can be considered a militia member, and therefore a terrorist: People who: display Bob Barr or Ron Paul stickers or apparel; display a Gadsden flag ("Don't Tread On Me"); those in possession of the movie "Zeitgeist", the book "America:Freedom to Fascism," or "The Turner Diaries" (Maybe a good call on Turner, it was written by the KKK in the 70s); also people who possess military style clothing, or possess semi-automatic firearms. Those who participate in military simulations (MILSIM) like paintball or airsoft are also to be considered terrorists. Also, Christians, and anyone with "right wing" or third party affiliations should be considered a possible terrorist.

My first thought was "this HAS to be a fabrication!". It is not. It is a real "analysis" handed out to members of the law enforcement community in Missouri. I hope this report was the result of poor research and political bias--not merely a re-packaged federal report. We may never know because the original MIAC report was restricted in circulation to the LE community. Somehow it leaked, and I commend the leaker. This stuff is downright scary. The worst part is that this is no Internet hoax. It is real. We are officially under the microscope as enemies of the state. Though no one on this site is a militia member, nor do we call for the violent removal of our government. But according to criteria from this report, we are all to be considered terrorists.

I don't think it will be long now. I hope you all have strong backs. You'll need them when you're mining salt for The People or pulling beets on The People's Farm.

UPDATE: 26 March, 2009 13:34hrs local time here at my bunker in northern Iowa.

I found a link confirming the above "intelligence analysis". The cover-your-ass backpedaling has begun. From all outward appearances, this was not Our Great Leader overreaching his bounds, but rather a high-placed moron going on a power trip. According to my link, heads may roll later this month.

----+----

After Kinder's press conference Col. James Keathley, superintendent of the Missouri Highway Patrol released a statement which reads in part:

"The release of a report on militia groups last month by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) has led me to take a hard look at the manner in which the Missouri State Highway Patrol oversees the dissemination of law enforcement information by the MIAC. My review of the procedures used by the MIAC in the three years since its inception indicates that the mechanism in place for oversight of reports needs improvement.

"Until two weeks ago, the process for release of reports from the MIAC to law enforcement officers around the state required no review by leaders of the Missouri State Highway Patrol or the Department of Public Safety. That process had been unchanged since the MIAC began issuing these reports in June 2007.

"For instance, the militia report was created by a MIAC employee, reviewed by the MIAC director, and sent immediately to law enforcement agencies across Missouri. The militia report was never reviewed by me or by the Director of Public Safety, John Britt, at any point prior to its issuance. Had that report been reviewed by either my office or by leaders of the Department of Public Safety, it would never have been released to law enforcement agencies."

----+----

Unlike Missouri law enforcement heads, I will tell you that my first source, AR15.com is a strongly pro 2nd Amendment website where firearms enthusiasts come to trade range stories, experience, and help sharpen the skills of other shooters. My second source is a TV station in central Missouri. Eat that you gun-grabbing, power hungry, poor-spelling leftards!

A Socialist Experiment

2009-03-26T04:14:00.000-07:00

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little..

The second Test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder it is to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.

Danger: The Sun is Going to Destroy Us All!

2009-03-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

Not really, but that's what the New Scientist wants us to believe.

From the article:

IT IS midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation's infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event - a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

It sounds ridiculous. Surely the sun couldn't create so profound a disaster on Earth. Yet an extraordinary report funded by NASA and issued by the US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in January this year claims it could do just that.

Over the last few decades, western civilisations have busily sown the seeds of their own destruction (clear neomarxist language). Our modern way of life, with its reliance on technology, has unwittingly exposed us to an extraordinary danger: plasma balls spewed from the surface of the sun could wipe out our power grids, with catastrophic consequences...

The liberals are stage-diving off the global warming Gorapalooza show right into the arms of freakish alarmists of all sorts. Remember when that giant wormhole was going to open up and suck the universe into it when they were replicating the conditions of the Big Bang in Europe? Yeah, more like the Big Whimper.

How about avian flu? Global cooling? DDT? Killer bees? Flouridated water?

What we see with the pseudo-science alarmism is the true face of progressives - people who believe that because an expert says something they are "in the know" and the rest are just sheeple. Well, let's see - how well has your global warming hysteria been going? Time for a new scare, eh, neomarxists?

Part of the disconnect between progressive "intellectuals" and ordinary mortals is that they confuse human beings for parts of a social machine that can be molded like gears and made to fit in and run smoothly. Well, at least gears made of gooey jello - you get the picture. They are no such thing. Human beings interact with their environments, they aren't completely molded by them.

This is the source of why so many otherwise smart people are antipathetic to liberty - they equate it to chaos, entropy, and thus the government is needed to herd the sheep away from their mindless self-destruction. Such a worldview assumes much, far too much.

Human beings have their own minds and are capable of self-correction. They typically avoid pain and seek the good, when not redirected by government toward some nebulous end. Take a baby and put him in front of some toys for instance. Do the toys make the baby play with them? Or does the baby do so out of his own natural curiosity?

Another fallacy of the left is exploded when we consider that the economy is not simply about using up resources, but about transforming them through labor. It is very oversimplistic to make it out as if the market economy means that we are going to use up all of our energy supplies and then we will have instant destruction. If anything the market ensures we take adequate and transparent account of supply and demand through pricing. Statist governments most often obscure the balance of resources through their central command economy approach and this leads to far worse environmental degradation than in market economies.

Why is this? Because private firms have an interest in replenishing resources and discovering new ones; ownership encourages responsibility. Socialism suffers from a rampant tragedy of the commons; everyone is responsible, and yet no one is. Well, people are far less apt to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs when it is their goose. Governments, on the other hand, are not interested in economic growth per se, more accurately they have an interest in placating the masses and papering over problems, such as giving them jobs, any jobs. This is not conducive to lasting solutions to real-world problems.

Furthermore,the socialistic left does not consider that the government is not an engine of progress or a gateway to freedom. It is a manager of men (and preferably criminals and not innocent people). The communists of the USSR, after the revolution, agonized over how to make the government into a vehicle of revolution. It led to the Trotsky-Stalin fall out, and Stalin inevitably won out because the situation, they presumed, demanded control.

This brings up another point. Since when does the government decide how people are going to live? If a group of people are peasants and want to grow wheat and then booze away the mid-season, what does the government care? If there is any justifiable reason for a legitimate government to intervene and take a modicum of the fruits of voting citizens' labor, it is to protect them from invaders and from criminals. Yet the development of nuclear weapons virtually guaranteed there would be no invasion of the United States or Soviet Union, and if anything, these countries ratcheted up social control even further.

Thus the end of the Cold War, and the reduction of the imminent threat of nuclear war, left the problem for government of creating a state of emergency in the minds of the people to justify a police state. This void was perfectly filled for neoconservatives with terrorism. Despite the increasing numbers of terrorist attacks since the late 1960s, in most countries the odds of getting killed by terrorism is far less than by getting hit by lightning. The potential of a catastrophic terrorist attack changes the risk assessment. But do the long odds of another 9/11 attack justify mortgaging our liberties?

President Bush recognized the danger to freedom after 9/11 and clearly said as much, and then did the responsible thing: He attacked the barbarians where they lived and disrupted their plans to develop nuclear weapons. The objections of "blood for oil" have proven false, as has our inability to win the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (the greatest stories never told). Bush, to the contrary of his ceaseless vilification, is a great friend to liberty for going on the offensive. Progressives have no love-lost for liberty, thus they have no capacity for recognizing this argument.

Furthermore, former President Bush did nothing to stem the obscene ridicule and hatred directed at him during his presidency. This is the exception to the rule in a time of war, and he should be recognized and commended for that as well.

Progressives hated the whole idea of a "war on terror," because it disrupted their plans for basing a police state on the grounds of social control for the people's own good. This is why the environmental extremism has been ginned up to unprecedented proportions. The sun is even better than CO2 on earth as a boogeyman, because the sun is out of reach, its behavior is not easily measurable by laymen and it is ultimately unpredictable.

It should be said that the progressives believe that they mean well, but they are essentially meddlers because they are in perpetual existential crisis and in need of reaffirmation by a grand cause that incorporates people that "they know better than." They have a secular version of a Jesus Christ complex - they have their make-believe crosses that they do not want to bear, and instead want to "socialize" them to the rest of us.

People need to seriously calm down on the environmental front. One thing the progressives do not consider, because they are neomarxists, is that alternative energy will become more viable in the market as carbons deplete. Nuclear will become more cost receptive, and finally solar, geothermal, hydro, wind and possibly cold fusion.

There is no use worrying about it every time the sun has a hiccup. The sun is a monster nuclear generator and our life is ultimately beholden to it. We should devise contingency plans to deal with the problems it may create but we should not turn over unbridled power to the governments in the interest of averting disaster.

This oldest trick in the book is the cause of the science-government incest we are currently witnessing.

George Soros: I'm Having A 'Very Good Crisis'

2009-03-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

George Soros, billionaire sleaze-ball extraordinaire, is having what he calls, "a very good crisis." Suggestive of the fact that he played a role in the current economic crisis is his smarmy smart-ass comment, "It is, in a way, the culminating point of my life’s work."

Don't think some of us aren't educated enough to understand exactly what that means, Mr. Soros.

Well rest assured that you will not live forever and after you pass you will have left nothing but pain and misery in your wake. Millions will remember you for what you are - an angry, bitter little man.

Obama Wants to Give IRS More Power

2009-03-25T14:01:00.000-07:00

March 25 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is putting former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker in charge of a tax- code review aimed at closing loopholes, streamlining the law and generating revenue, budget director Peter Orszag said.

Volcker, 81, who heads the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, is being asked to take a look at the laws in an effort to rebalance the tax system.

Orszag said the review, given a deadline of Dec. 4, is being ordered to make recommendations on steps to simplify the code, built over the last 96 years, in ways that would reduce tax evasion and what he called “corporate welfare.”

“There are hundreds of billions of dollars in uncollected taxes each year,” Orszag said in a conference call. The Volcker board “will be examining ways of being even more aggressive on reducing the tax gap.”...[More]

Flashback: The Lady's Not for Turning

2009-03-25T12:06:00.000-07:00

EU Prez: U.S. Stimulus a "Road to Hell"

2009-03-25T10:59:00.000-07:00

EU president calls Obama's plans to spend his way out of recession 'the road to hell'

BRUSSELS (AP) -- The head of the European Union slammed President Barack Obama's plan to spend nearly $2 trillion to push the U.S. economy out of recession as "the road to hell" that EU governments must avoid.

The blunt comments by Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek to the European Parliament on Wednesday highlighted simmering European differences with Washington ahead of a key summit next week on fixing the world economy.
It was the strongest pushback yet from a European leader as the 27-nation bloc bristles from U.S. criticism that it is not spending enough to stimulate demand.
Shocked by the outburst, other European politicians went into damage control mode, with some reproaching the Czech leader for his language and others reaffirming their good diplomatic ties with the United States. The leaders of EU's major nations -- France, Britain and Germany, among others -- largely ignored Topolanek and his remarks. [More]...

Meanwhile, in related news, the Czech government again collapsed. The Social Democrats are dissatisfied with the "soundest economy in Europe" and seek to spend their way to prosperity.

Czech economy weathering the storm

[FT] The collapse of the Czech government slightly weakened the koruna but did little to sway the Prague stock exchange, a sign that the political crisis is so far having little impact on central Europe’s soundest economy.
The centre-right government of Mirek Topolanek, prime minister, was ousted on Tuesday after losing a vote of confidence by a razor-thin 101 votes in the 200-seat parliament. He is scheduled to resign on Thursday after addressing the European parliament, although his cabinet is expected to continue functioning.
Mr Topolanek’s management of the economic downturn was one of the reasons for his defeat – the opposition Social Democrats favour a freer spending approach to battling the recession – but the most important cause of his fall was that he had run one of the weakest governments in central Europe. The opposition had tried four previous times to defeat the government, which only controlled 96 parliamentary seats.Once Mr Topolanek resigns, the initiative moves to Vaclav Klaus, the eurosceptic president. Saying it was his fourth change of government in six years as president, Mr Klaus added: “We have always successfully solved the situation, and I would like to assure the Czech public that it will be resolved this time as well. [More]

This goes to show that leftists never learn from their mistakes or the mistakes of others. In fact, it appears like they intentionally ratchet up pressure on the "economy of reality" in order to replace it with an "economy of fantasy."

Adrift in the Zeit-Geithner: Secretary of Treasury Open to International Currency

2009-03-25T10:47:00.000-07:00

"And now I take all the people's money, with my claw of power."

March 25 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent the dollar tumbling with comments about China’s ideas for overhauling the global monetary system, only to drive it back up by affirming that it should remain the world’s reserve currency.

Geithner was initially asked at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York about proposals from People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan for a new international reserve currency. He said “as I understand his proposal, it’s a proposal designed to increase the use of the IMF’s special drawing rights. And we’re actually quite open to that.”

The dollar slid as much as 1.3 percent against the euro within 10 minutes of news accounts of Geithner’s remarks. The U.S. currency was down 0.6 percent at $1.3553 as of 12:31 p.m. in New York...[More insanity]

What it Means to Speak Truth to Power

2009-03-25T10:40:00.000-07:00

Obama's One Ring

2009-03-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

Three rings for the Auto-kings who on their jets fly,
Seven for the Banking-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for the trillions lost as the nation dies,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the Land of D.C. where the Shadows lie.
One ring to fool them all,
One ring to blind them,
One ring to school them all
And in their dumbness bind them.
In the Land of D.C. where the Shadows lie.

President Obama's behavior in his first sixty days in office recalls Lord Acton's insight, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.”

Lord Acton could not have foreseen an Obama,who is a thoroughly mediocre everyman by resume; whose narcissistic charm, packaged production, and media glad-handling propelled him to the throne of the most powerful nation on earth.

Obama came to power with the lie of "unifying the nation." The symbol of his campaign was a ring and a rising sun beyond an American flag with no stars. The ring encompasses all of America in stark imagery.

It is unclear whether the sun is rising or setting.

Obama, an insecure man who never before wielded great power, even as a Senator, is now tasked with insurmountable economic problems and is armed with an impotent set of tools, based in fantasy and not reality, with which to tackle them.

Such is the scenario that produces tyrants.

In J.R.R. Tolkien's masterpiece The Lord of the Rings, the suggestive power of rings is woven throughout. The "invisible ring" of the diminutive but morally steadfast and courageous Frodo, the One ring of power, can be considered a literary allusion to the Ring of Gyges, a dilemma put forth by the character Glaucon in Plato's Republic. The parallel with Obama's point of view is striking.

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point. And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. (Benjamin Jowitt transl., emphases added)

Obama centralizing control and aggregating power shows that he is unable to responsibly command the office of the presidency. The thinly veiled but always lurking coercion of the government is the invisible ring he wears to pursue his moral crusade of stealing from the productive to give to the non-productive. His totalitarian worldview of equality blinds him to the possibility that an economy can be a sum-gain proposition.

Power tends to attract gollums as well.

The one sure way to survive in Obama's America is to crawl to the government and kiss the Dark Lord's ring of power. Obama and his Ringwraiths are the ultimate harbingers of doom; they are delusional enough to believe themselves our Chosen Saviours.

McConnell: Obama budget makes US worse than Cuba

2009-03-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

Agence France Presse:

President Barack Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget plan will leave the United States with a worse budget deficit than Cuba, a leading Republican critic warned Tuesday. "This creates for us a higher deficit than Cuba's.

This is not the kind of position we want to put the United States in," Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.

Other Republican critics of Obama's spending policies, including his nearly 800-billion-dollar economic stimulus package, have variously warned that he risks turning the country into Argentina, France, Germany, or Zimbabwe.

Asked for the figures underpinning the charge, a McConnell aide pointed to a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that warned the US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009, ending September 30, would swell to 13.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product.

Cuba's deficit in 2008 was 4.1 percent of GDP using the official exchange rate, or 1.57 percent using another measure of total national output, according to the CIA.

According to official Cuban government figures, Cuba's projected deficit in 2009 will run to 5.6 percent of GDP, less than the 6.7 percent it reached in 2008.

Propaganda Soon to Be"Non-Profit" - Along With Everything Else

2009-03-24T17:20:00.000-07:00

U.S. bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers
By Thomas Ferraro

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With many U.S. newspapers struggling to survive, a Democratic senator on Tuesday introduced a bill to help them by allowing newspaper companies to restructure as nonprofits with a variety of tax breaks.
"This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat," said Senator Benjamin Cardin.

A Cardin spokesman said the bill had yet to attract any co-sponsors, but had sparked plenty of interest within the media, which has seen plunging revenues and many journalist layoffs.

Cardin's Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, giving them a similar status to public broadcasting companies.

Under this arrangement, newspapers would still be free to report on all issues, including political campaigns. But they would be prohibited from making political endorsements.

Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt, and contributions to support news coverage or operations could be tax deductible. [More?]

Jesus, I think we are trying to outdo the Soviet Union. Not even they were so ambitious with their radical communist plans, seeing as they had to fight off a few million resisters ironically called the White Army (the Soviets referred to many as kulaks, i.e. those who don't take kindly to thieves).

An Axial Age

2009-03-24T16:35:00.000-07:00

It’s ironic that the Founding Fathers enthroned reason as the basis of a political system for the first time in history at about the same time when Immanuel Kant laid the philosophical foundation for the subsequent destruction of reason. Would it have been better to live then, if one knew that the splendor and beauty of a rational society being created would ultimately be destroyed by some schmuck then living in Koenigsberg?

I hope Obama will meet in hell with his creator, that bloody Prussian charlatan…

News from the Future

2009-03-24T13:24:00.000-07:00

The People's Commissariat of Associated Press, Obamuary 13, 2015. General Secretary Comrade Obama has announced a $2 sextillion economic stimulus plan to boost the U.S. economy.

“A $43 quintillion stimulus package enacted in 2011 failed because of corporate greed,” said Comrade Krugman, a professor at the obamanomics department of the Bill Ayers University. “We need a much bigger amount. The plan announced by our Great Leader Comrade Obama is magnificent, but I think we need even more, and I know that Chairman Obama agrees with me. Some economists say we need umpteen dollars, while others say we need a zillion dollars, but I personally believe a godzillion would be sufficient to revive the economy.”

Reverend Wright, high priest of the Church of Saint Obama, sprinkled holy urine upon the first batch of helicopter money printed under the plan.

“In the name of the Father, the Mother and the Muthafucka,” His Holiness said. “Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father Obama feedeth them. Let these helicopters ascend to the sky like fowls and bestow this manna upon the Chosen People. God damn America, amen.”
Karl Marx Street was enthusiastic about the news. Stock markets rallied.

“I think we’ll finally see light at the end of the tunnel,” a Karl Marx Street trader said. “I firmly believe this stimulus plan is gonna make it, unlike the previous ones.”

Comrade Bernanke, chairman of the People’s Commissariat for Banking and Finance, said he had a positive outlook for the U.S. economy.

“Everything is under control,” Comrade Bernanke said. “We have drastically reduced inflation to a mere 1000% rate.”

George Will: The Toxic Assets We Elected

2009-03-24T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Toxic Assets We Elected by George Will

The Washington Post: Tuesday, March 24, 2009

With the braying of 328 yahoos -- members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group -- still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

TARP funds have, however, semi-purchased, among many other things, two automobile companies (and, last week, some of their parts suppliers), which must amaze Sweden. That unlikely tutor of America regarding capitalist common sense has said, through a Cabinet minister, that the ailing Saab automobile company is on its own: "The Swedish state is not prepared to own car factories."

Another embarrassing auditor of American misgovernment is China, whose premier has rightly noted the unsustainable trajectory of America's high-consumption, low-savings economy. He has also decorously but clearly expressed sensible fears that his country's $1 trillion-plus of dollar-denominated assets might be devalued by America choosing, as banana republics have done, to use inflation for partial repudiation of improvidently incurred debts

From Mexico, America is receiving needed instruction about fundamental rights and the rule of law. A leading Democrat trying to abolish the right of workers to secret ballots in unionization elections is California's Rep. George Miller who, with 15 other Democrats, in 2001 admonished Mexico: "The secret ballot is absolutely necessary in order to ensure that workers are not intimidated into voting for a union they might not otherwise choose." Last year, Mexico's highest court unanimously affirmed for Mexicans the right that Democrats want to strip from Americans...[Continued]

Jefferson warned that "great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities." But Democrats, who trace their party's pedigree to Jefferson, are contemplating using "reconciliation" -- a legislative maneuver abused by both parties to severely truncate debate and limit the minority's right to resist -- to impose vast and controversial changes on the 17 percent of the economy that is health care. When the Congressional Budget Office announced that the president's budget underestimates by $2.3 trillion the likely deficits over the next decade, his budget director, Peter Orszag, said: All long-range budget forecasts are notoriously unreliable -- so rely on ours.

This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government's role in it.

Prager: Why All the Love for the Commies?

2009-03-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com by Dennis Prager

Why Doesn't Communism Have as Bad a Name as Nazism?

Why is it that when people want to describe particularly evil individuals or regimes, they use the terms "Nazi" or "Fascist" but almost never "Communist?"

Given the amount the human suffering Communists have caused - 70 million killed in China, 20-30 million in the former Soviet Union, and almost one-third of all Cambodians; the decimation of Tibetan and Chinese culture; totalitarian enslavement of North Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russians; a generation deprived of human rights in Cuba; and much more — why is "Communist" so much less a term of revulsion than "Nazi?"

There are Mao Restaurants in major cities in the Western world. Can one imagine Hitler Restaurants? Che Guevara T-shirts are ubiquitous, yet there are no Heinrich Himmler T-shirts.

This question is of vital significance. First, without moral clarity, humanity has little chance of avoiding a dark future. Second, the reasons for this moral imbalance tell us a great deal about ourselves today. Here, then, are seven reasons.

1. Communists murdered their own people; the Nazis murdered others. Under Mao about 70 million people died - nearly all in peacetime! - virtually all of them Chinese. Likewise, the approximately 30 million people that Stalin had killed were nearly all Russians, and those who were not Russian, Ukrainians for example, were members of other Soviet nationalities.

The Nazis, on the other hand, killed very few fellow Germans. Their victims were Jews, Slavs and members of other "non-Aryan" and "inferior" groups.

"World opinion" - that vapid amoral concept - deems the murder of members of one's group far less noteworthy than the murder of outsiders. That is one reason why blacks killing millions of fellow blacks in the Congo right now elicits no attention from "world opinion." But if an Israeli soldier is charged with having killed a Gaza woman and two children, it makes the front page of world newspapers. [More...]

The GIVE Act: Building An Obambie Army

2009-03-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

A nation of Obama zombies or "Obambies" are set to be unleashed upon the God-fearing electorate of the United States. These zombies do not feed on brains, but taxpayer dollars. They are considered armed and extremely whiney.

[Those fans of Resident Evil may do well to recall that head shots are much more effective than body shots. Furthermore, rifles and pistols are preferable to shotguns. Don't even waste your time on knives or clubs.]

Now back to reality, sort of.

The GIVE act of 2009 (there was one for 2008 that has nothing to do with this one), or HR 1388, will recruit an Obama Youth (OY) brigade to patrol for those who are not performing their indentured role to the government in an indenturey enough way. Those who question the Great Leader will be subject to public ridicule at the hands of leftist schleps Olbermouth or Communist Central's Jon Stewart.

The act is set to be voted on Tuesday, March 24th (if Pelosi can make it back from her daily Botox injections) and provides $6 billion in Stalinist-style funding for ritual fascist-socialist (fuck, I can't even keep them straight anymore) - hell, Obamunist indoctrination.

This bill is more frightening than Resident Evil - it's President Evil.

If this bill passes, expect to see hordes of leftists handing out shovels. This may indeed turn out to be very ironic.

Alan Keyes Calls Obama A Radical Commie

2009-03-24T07:08:00.000-07:00

Obama Confirms "Conspiracy Theories"

2009-03-24T06:47:00.000-07:00

What do you call it when a man is elected and immediately begins grabbing power under the guise of a 'crisis'?

What do you call it when the government ignores the Constitution and rules arbitrarily?

What do you call it when the government seizes the assets of the public and claims expediency?

What do you call it when the politicians are so corrupt they refuse to be held accountable for their own actions precipitating the 'crisis' and instead go on a binge of show trials?

What do you call it when the economy is so degraded that the country goes from one of the most free and prosperous to a de facto state of bankruptcy (more debt than net worth)?

What do you call it when the central bank destroys the currency through a process of perpetual inflation?

What do you call rampant bank and firm nationalizations, cries for more 'regulations' (laws) and blatant anti-capitalist behavior?

Some call it "conspiracy." Well baby, this conspiracy is out in the open.

For years the liberals in education, the media, the courts, and the government have been prepping for The Big Payback. No longer would millionaire businessmen prosper by providing products that the people want and the means for people to build them. Oh no. Those days are over. "Thanks for the memories, but we, the experts, will be taking over now," they say.

Only a blind "believer" in hope and change as intrinsic values could find the departure from limited government an exciting and innovative voyage. If you got to page fifty in any world history book from the early 1950s, that idea would be immediately abandoned. Why it seems a novel and noble experiment to the younger generations is the direct result of radical bromides perpetuated in our schools and universities for decades.

These bromides are not the ramblings of an Alinsky or Gramsci, but they directly buttress their radical programs. "Always share," "there is no right and wrong," "we are all winners," "it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game," "can't we all just get along?"

Yes we can!

First, keep your hands off the fruit of my labor. Second, cut your hair and get rid of those ridiculous tattoos. Now, quit your whining about the rich. It's not their fault you're a bum. Can you build and sell computers without the factory he designed and built? No? Then shut up and get a job. Fourth, get off my lawn. I'm putting in some marigolds.