Free Lemming

Obama Photo

2011-07-14T13:21:00.001-07:00

Beware the curse of 'zombie' copy: does your writing lack the spark of life?

2011-04-06T08:34:00.000-07:00

Beware the curse of 'zombie' copy: does your writing lack the spark of life?

2011-03-12T17:21:00.000-08:00

From Yevgenii Zamyatin's "We":

Record Two
Keywords: Ballet. Quadratic Harmony. X.
[...]
And then I thought to myself: why? Is this beautiful? Why is this dance beautiful? The answer: because it is non-free movement, because the whole profound point of this dance lies precisely in its absolute, aesthetic subordination, its perfect non-freedom. If indeed our our ancestors were prone to dancing at the most inspired moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), then all this can only mean one thing: the instinct for non-freedom.

(Natasha Randall translation)

Obama Slashes Transportation Budget; In Other News, Obama Unveils New Transportation Plan

2010-12-04T13:34:00.000-08:00

Obama Replaces Costly High-Speed Rail Plan With High-Speed Bus Plan

ONN: Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle On Obama's Double-Homicide

2010-12-04T13:04:00.001-08:00

WASHINGTON - "More than a week after President Barack Obama's cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.

"I know there's a story in there somewhere," said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama's home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. "Right now though, it's probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation."

Added Meacham, "It's not so cut and dried."

http://www.theonion.com/articles/media-having-trouble-finding-right-angle-on-obamas%2C2703/

The Leviathan Express

2010-11-21T04:07:00.001-08:00

We are hurtling headlong into the statist abyss forewarned by our founding fathers. As Thomas Jefferson recognized that "The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

In this regard, the government can be likened to a speeding train possessing a kind of inertia. Its tendency is not to rest on a foundation of perpetual liberty, but to accelerate with increasing hubris into every aspect of human life.

It takes a great deal of effort for the train of government to be set into motion. Its engine of coercion animates the machinery of state: it drives the escalating taxation, the dependency of welfare state programs, the propaganda organs of public schools and colleges, the adventurism of endless wars.

As such, Barack Obama is not the engineer of our impending national demise, but the latest conductor on a long train of abuses. You see, if Obama left office tomorrow, not much would change in a government that has been systematically lying to us in earnest since the Wilson administration.

The lubrication of the state is the big lie. Debt itself is a kind of lie that people tell themselves that their way of life is somehow sustainable. The welfare state is the lie that nearly half the American public are incapable of providing for themselves. (This in an economy that see five percent unemployment in "normal" periods of free market capitalism. Try to design a system of human affairs that runs at ninety-five percent efficiency, better than the ordered liberty of true capitalism.) Public education is built on lies that exalt the state, and diminish liberty. Wars justified by self-defense become wars of expediency, and ends in themselves.

America has been on a crash course with reality ever since the Fed engineers started shoveling dollars into the Leviathan Express. That was long before we puffed pass the Potemkin villages of the progressive imagination. Behind the shoddy facades of the New Deal and the Great Society, we saw the human wreckage of welfare dependents with nowhere to go but sideways. Yet the smiling visage of the heroic FDR with throngs of supplicating citizens at his feet made such a pleasant backdrop in our periphery as we thumbed over our pages of Look magazine. The ups and downs, the starts and stops, no one dared question that we were all being taken for a ride.

The train accelerated and national exhilaration pumped our hearts with fresh blood. We felt alive again. We had a sense of mission as a people and all was full steam ahead. But as winter set in, an unfamiliar chill froze our breath in mid-air. The attendant stopped in from time to time to make sure that we were comfortable, to offer us some chamomile, and to engage in some idle conversation.

Then came the entertainers. A television was installed in every car to occupy our minds. The car attendants served fresh bread and jam. America was getting fat and happy.

Then the train psychologists and social workers stopped by to make sure all was well. In between the awkward laughs and specious socializing, inquisitive passengers faintly noticed through the window that the picturesque vistas of our nation's youth were fading. Some detected in the scenery haphazard signs that something was awry. Not enough to mention in polite conversation, but there it was.

It wasn't until the train approached the ghost town of Carterville when people sat up and began to pay attention. Keynesian bandits conducted a daring raid on the train, hitting up the passengers and carrying off heaping bags of gold. Beneath the clumsy disguises, one could see the impudent mustaches so characteristic of Europeans. As they rode off into the sunset, the Feds shot and shot until they ran out of bullets. In the luxury car where the whiskey-breathed elites consorted, a butler later discovered a pistol laying on a poker table. It was filled with blanks.

In the aftermath of the robbery, there was a time when all appeared right with the world. We had a president who spoke platitudes so familiar to the American people, and who even reflected some of their values, for the first time in a long time. It was a fleeting period that soon passed.

We are now on a speeding train and the increasingly disturbing scenery is flying by our windows so fast that we don't even have time to take it all in. The attendant now comes with a gun instead of chocolates, and empties our wallets and purses. The toothy grin once so charming has now worn thin.

We are also alarmed to find the train is not going in a direction of our choosing. Perhaps it was an illusion that we were in control all along. The Liberty line was switched some time ago, and we now see the signs of Tyranny and Terror adorning a wasteland of broken promises and shattered lives. Up ahead, we see a tunnel, a black void threatening to swallow us whole. If there is any way off of this train, we better jump now. There are no promises that it's not going to hurt.

America: Free or Fascist?

2010-11-18T08:13:00.000-08:00

It is time for some Americans to sober up. We are now faced with an incipient tyranny of unimaginable proportions. If America becomes fascist, the world will descend into chaos and despair. So let us ask ourselves a question about America now: Are we free or fascist?

We have to define fascism in order to judge if we already have it in our nation. If we use the Constitution as intended, and especially the Bill of Rights, which is to say, as a demarcation of freedom, it will throw much relief onto the matter.

Those who believe fascism to be primarily nationalist, racist, and anti-semitic have a conception of the political system as defined by circumstantial manifestations – fascism is an ideology of unity in a great leader or party. It is characterized by command control of the economy, intense political propaganda, and a police state apparatus that tramples the rights of individuals. Whether the cleavages the ruler(s) choose to accentuate or exploit is class, ethnicity, nation, or religion (or some combination of these) – it is a matter of the flavor of a given fascism at hand, not a matter of distinct political ruling principles. Fascism can even theoretically be extrapolated out to the world stage, with nations as the distinct cleavages to be ‘unified’ by a great leader (likely acting on behalf of a governing body of aspiring oligarchs). The great leader is the public relations persona, the charming, smiling “face” of the organization.

The great leader is usually a classic narcissist. He can be extremely dangerous, especially in the face of public ridicule. He believes himself to be a Hegelian “big man of history” who is ahead of his time and the embodiment of the Zeitgeist. The great leader’s arrogance and narcissism can easily be publicly received as self-confidence, but this is usually a false image: Narcissists can be notoriously sensitive when it comes to criticism. The great leader usually wields what Max Weber referred to as “charismatic authority.” He is a well-trained liar and manipulator. He may feel himself to be as a canvass upon which the collective paints their desires. This feeling of unity with the masses can feed into egomania and megalomania. Grandiose plans and desires may feel easily within reach. He may perceive himself or herself to be specially anointed by God. There have been great leaders who believed themselves to be gods, or acting in the aegis of God.

Control of the economy in collectivist regimes is carried out in many different ways. Private property may be abolished, but this is very rare; more common is the seizure and re-distribution of quasi-private property by the state. Capital may be abolished, but again this is highly impractical; so many collectivist regimes issue internal currency or industrial credits (similar in concept to “carbon credits”). Regulations may channel business into desired production, may kill small businesses in the interest of larger ones, and can potentially control the economy through a system of prohibitions. There are a myriad of means to control economies and the most effective is to control the currency through a central bank. Central banks can trigger an economic crisis through overly rapid and massive inflation of the money supply or alternatively, a sudden constriction of the money supply – both can play right into the ruling elites’ hands. The chaos that ensues from a collapse of the currency demands swift and strong government action. Never let a good crisis go to waste, as it has been remarked.

The fascist regime is saturated with political propaganda. Politics infiltrates every sphere of life, and privacy seems to dissolve, like salt in a solution. Neighbors may spy on their neighbors, children on their parents, wives on their husbands, and teachers on their students. Speech is highly charged and explosive, leading to convenient calls to have it more regulated, thus cutting off dialogue and leading directly to frustration and violence. Television ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine articles, radio “PSAs” (propaganda service announcements), inundate the citizen with praise and support for the policies of the government and for the great leader.

Last but not least comes the police state. It is inevitable in a command economy that an overly controlling central government unleashes a host of unintended consequences. A market economy is founded on, and is most sensitive to, the demand of each individual for a desired good or service at any given moment. This is not merely a matter of idiosyncracies, but what medical treatment he requires, what kind of food he wants to eat, how much, and when, what kind of exercise he needs to do and how much – it is inconceivable that millions of individual, distinct human beings can be programmed to operate in a desired manner by a few hundred politicians in Washington. But this doesn’t stop the government from trying. As the central government’s best-laid plans inevitably go awry, more and more regulations attempt to dam the problems in, but they eventually overflow the system of levees the government puts into place.

In summary, fascism is the drive to unify the political, economic, social, and private spheres of human existence in the state. The state is necessarily oligarchic (see Michels' Iron Law of Oligarchy); "democratic" control of a state (a modern form of polity) is a ruse used to justify such "unification."

Many people think that it cannot happen here, in the “exceptional” United States. But the signs are all around for anyone to take notice of and compare to totalitarian regimes of the past. The propagandizing of children, the deification of a great leader, the nationalization of industry, the control of the currency, the overwhelming media propaganda, the attempt to create crises that demand swift and strong government action – does this not describe what is taking place in this country now?

America is at a crossroads. The temptation of turning to government to solve all our problems will be great. The price of standing up for liberty will become more costly. But if we continue our complacent abdication of personal responsibility for safeguarding this country for ourselves and our posterity, there will be nowhere to escape. We will be prisoners in our own nation and a shameful people in the judgment of history.

Ron Paul Gives Statists An Earful

2010-11-18T05:49:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul on Individual Rights and the TSA

John Taylor Gatto - On State-Run Education

2010-11-16T01:24:00.000-08:00

John Taylor Gatto - State Controlled Consciousness

John Taylor Gatto - On Education

Classrooms of the Heart - John Gatto (1991)

Non-Profits and Communist Front Groups

2010-11-15T23:30:00.001-08:00

The Forgotten Enemies

2010-11-13T07:49:00.001-08:00

There is perhaps no greater evidence of the anti-American nature of the purported "mainstream media" than its deafening silence regarding the true nature of our enemies abroad. This Veterans' Day saw our brave men and women in uniform fighting overseas to vanquish some of the most atrocious and despicable foes imaginable, and yet our news channels neglect to inform Americans of just how evil our enemies are.

Our wars are invisible wars, waged against faceless enemies, overseas in distant lands. The daily body counts force-fed to the American public to undercut morale for "Bush's war," all but disappeared under the leftist media's appointed leader Barack Hussein Obama. These "body counts" did not do justice to the heroism of our military, but merely served a sick purpose in the left's worldview. But their spin cannot take away that these are men and women fighting in inhuman conditions against subhuman foes.

Prior to the wars, we heard the cries of injustice from the left and its tacit support for the status quo nightmare regimes of Iraq and Afghanistan. Now we hear it about Iran. The left does not want us to know what horrific atrocities are committed overseas because evil abroad is not the focus of the left's interests. The left is so sick, as a matter of fact, that many deny that evil even exists. Except in America's case, that is.

To the left, the United States is thought to be the perpetrator of all the world's problems, and as such the face of true evil abroad cannot be revealed. While such groups as the UN and Amnesty International may decry genocide and human rights violations in lands where "brown people" live, the second the United States or Israel move to act or to defend themselves against them, they are the ones who are condemned, even lambasted. That America builds up every nation it defeats in war, and that Israel bends over backwards to supplicate its enemies, only to be proven fools time and time again, provides no merits to these "capitalist" nations from the left's point of view.

The genius of the left's warped Marxist worldview holds that if America is rich, then it is at the expense of the world's poor. Since people are poor, they commit evil. If we give them all our wealth until we are equally poor, then all would be healed and right with the world.

The left's insipid and simplistic narrative glosses over that these are ancient civilizations we are at war with who are struggling mightily not to give way to modernity, which we might summarize succinctly as "freedom." These nations' existence preceded the founding of the United States and they had been notoriously barbaric for centuries prior. The romanticism of the "noble savages" of exotic far-off lands does not hold up to the historical record, despite the left's disingenuous and destructive insistence on cultural relativism.

America, the engine of the world's wealth, home for refugees who fled tyranny, liberator of nations, defender of the hopeless and oppressed, has been vilified by the leftists to the point that millions believe them. Our military is helping people abroad and it is time the left acknowledges it. The wars overseas are providing more good and hope to the world than any government-welfare program the left can dream up, which is paid for in other people's sweat and blood, of course.

The United States military is defending us from a barbaric scourge and meanwhile protecting millions overseas from some of the most brutal groups in world history. The reason we are free as a nation is not simply because we are protected by our military, any military, but because of we have a volunteer military of freemen who fight for liberty and human dignity. Whether it comes to fighting against enemies abroad or at home, we are proud to know that we have a force unlike the world has ever seen, who will fight to uphold our Constitution, defend our liberty, and preserve our way of life.

The 9/11 attacks

Tyrant Saddam's Reign in Terror

The Taliban: The Truth About The War In Afghanistan

Hitler Finds Out The GOP has retaken the House

2010-11-11T15:45:00.000-08:00

Hat tip: The Dougout

The Soviet Story

2010-11-11T06:56:00.001-08:00

The Soviet Story reveals the untold story of the collaboration between the Nazis and the Soviets prior to and during the early stages of World War II. It must be pretty powerful because the crypto-communists at the New York Times felt compelled to unleash a juvenile hit piece against it on their website.

Hat tip: Barking Moonbat

One of the PIIGS About to Be Slaughtered

2010-11-10T05:28:00.000-08:00

Ireland's crisis flares as investors dump bonds

By Shawn Pogatchnik

DUBLIN (AP) - Ireland's financial troubles loomed large Wednesday as investors - betting that the country soon could join Greece in seeking an EU bailout - drove the interest rate on the country's 10-year borrowing to a new high.

The yield on 10-year bonds rose above 8 percent for the first time since the launch of the euro, the European Union's common currency, 11 years ago.

The cost of funding Irish debt has risen steadily since September, when the government admitted its bailout efforts of five banks would cost at least euro45 billion, equivalent to euro10,000 for every man, woman and child in Ireland. That gargantuan bill, in turn, has made the projected 2010 deficit rise to 32 percent of GDP, the highest in post-war Europe. [Continued]

Why Today's Democrat is a C-Word

2010-11-10T04:49:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of snorting, chuckling, and guffawing on the left about hare-brained conservative types getting all bent out of shape about the "socialist" Democrats (cue laugh track). Never mind that many Democrats are springing out of the woodwork like the economic termites they are and announcing that they are "socialist and proud of it."

One such episode came from the election-night coverage of MSNBC, an obscure network whose "analysis" resembled in some ways that of the CPUSA's (guess who they favored?). During a testy exchange between Lawrence O'Donnell and an interchangeable Democrat Party hack about who could out-left whom, Larry boasted:

"Unlike you, I am not a progressive. I am not a liberal who is so afraid of the word that I have to change my name to progressive. Liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals. However, I know this about my country. Liberals are 20% of the electorate, conservatives are 41% of the electorate [correction: 48%] . Okay? So I don't pretend that my views, which would ban all guns in America, make Medicare available to all in America, have any chance of happening in the federal government. You can sit there and pretend that liberals should run more liberal in conservative districts."

There are a few points here to consider about Mr. O'Donnell's coming out party. Though you cannot argue by anecdote about this one particular host, it is striking how he had to tell us he is a socialist, or else we wouldn't have known it. He acts and talks like a "liberal," "progressive," or "socialist." Next, he wears the word "socialist" like a badge of honor, one-upping his lefty co-conspirator. In addition, O'Donnell knows that the socialist must use subterfuge, and indeed, he effectively counsels leftist candidates not to run on a hard left platform. The most chilling part came when he blurted out that he would ban all guns in America, implying that the state be the only institution allowed to possess them! And "Medicare for all," well we know that is effectively giving the state life and death control over all citizens, while weighing the value of their lives in terms of benefit to the collective.

So while some people may squirm calling today's leftist the "C-word," I have no problem doing it. We conservatives play footsie with the political lexicon so much we act like "communism" is a dirty word. Is communism "dead," just because the USSR "collapsed" in 1989? No, it just went underground, picking up new disguises, such as radical environmentalism.

So I am going to put myself out there and just say it: Today's Democrat is functionally a communist. He may not know he is a communist. He may not subscribe to Marx or Engels. But his ideas derive in many aspects from communist thinking. Feel free to yell "McCarthyite!" at any time now.

To substantiate this claim, I need to show how political lexicon changes, and the relationship of "communist" to other descriptions of leftism, such as "liberal" and "socialist." We will basically just chalk up progressivism as slow-motion or Fabian socialism.

Let's start with conservatism, to illustrate how political terms have changed over time and to provide a backdrop to who today's "leftist" is. Now "conservatism" in the European context is much different than "conservatism" in the American context. In regards to European conservatism, meaning the Ancien Regime, then the Founders of this country are to be considered liberal radicals. To us, they are classical liberals.

Today, American conservatives tend to be classical liberals at their core, but they are still called "conservatives." Over time, the term "conservatism" in the American context acquired baggage. That is because overturning a decaying monarchical system and establishing a functional regime of government are two entirely different prerogatives. Sustaining government in a competitive world of clashing states is a further prerogative, implying the need to build national defense, preserve a culture conducive to freedom and resistant to subversion, and wisely and prudently weigh the benefits of isolationism versus entanglement.

In the Burkean mode, conservatism means incremental change, so as to minimize social and political disruption. But does conservatism mean preserving cultural and political institutions for their own sake, or those conducive to freedom, while jettisoning those opposed to freedom? This is no idle debate, but much turns on its answer in the opposition of libertarian and conservative philosophy. But are both conservative? A so-called "modern liberal" would say so.

Today's "modern liberal" opposes the country's Burkean conservatism, and our history of liberty. From the point of view of the Founders, the modern liberal is a reactionary, seeking to install a counter-revolution to reimpose statism over the citizenry. The means of performing this counter-revolution are democracy and communist ideology, both ancient in their impulses, and both condemned by Aristotle in 'Politics.'

The Marxian mode of communism gave doctrinal form to the primitive impulse to redistribute materials "evenly." It specifically distorts the meaning of 'equality' in the Enlightenment context to mean equality of outcomes rather than that of opportunity.

While it can be argued that such perverters of classical liberalism should be called (modern) "liberals," I find little "liberating" about their oppressive, state-heavy ideology. In terms of their animating ideal, the form given to their counter-reactionary drive to reimpose state domination over the people, it is very communistic.

The Democrats make a living on such communistic notions as: redistribution of wealth; class warfare; ethnic, racial, and sexual "liberation"; anti-capitalism writ large; state regulation of business and commerce; progressive taxation; intentional debasement of the currency; disdain for the rule of law; coordinated propaganda in education and media; ruthless demonization and scapegoating of "class enemies," such as corporations, the "reactionary" middle class, and conservatives in general. This is addition to sharing hallmarks incidental to most socialist regimes, such as fostering a cult of personality around a demagogue, nationalizing wide swathes of the private sector, and installing massive and unsustainable welfare programs.

The difference between socialism and communism is not in kind, but lay on a spectrum; and since it is in the nature of government to acquire more power when and where it can, the breakdown of economy and society under the socialist system tends towards dissipation of social and political opposition, strengthening the conditions for communist tyranny.

Socialist policies, which in the present context are commensurate with communist policies (with the left's strengthening of the police state, we can come down firmly on the communist side of the spectrum), are mainstream Democrat Party politics, which is perhaps why many are catching on and fleeing the party. But calling today's Democrats "liberals" is what requires a stretch of the imagination, not "communists." Just because the leftists haven't installed a communist regime, doesn't mean that that isn't their ultimate aim.

A Rebirth Of The American Revolution?

2010-11-10T04:48:00.001-08:00

This is an article well worth reading to gain some context on where we are as a nation and where we are heading. It's theme is similar to one I have discussed elsewhere: Today's conservatives come from a heritage of radicals for liberty, and today's leftists are actually reactionary neo-statists.

The key passage from Forbes:

The declaration that "all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," turned the known political world of monarchy, hierarchy and privilege in which subjects existed to serve the state upside down. As Gordon S. Wood makes clear in his book, The Radicalism of the American Revolution, the American Revolution "… destroyed aristocracy as it had been understood in the Western world for at least two millennia. Moreover, it brought respect to the dignity of the individual, and honored their work, no matter how menial."

In this context, the modern liberal and the progressive movements can be considered a counter-revolutionary force. The leaders of these movements have pursued the use of government power to protect individuals from poor decisions and to intermediate between them and businesses. In the process, they have necessarily empowered government bureaucrats to intrude in ever more ways into the day-to-day lives of the average American. [...]

The result has been to recreate the hierarchal order of old, but one in which the role of the ancient aristocrat is assumed by the modern intellectual. Driven by the power motive, these individuals seek elected or bureaucratic office or influence through their advisory roles. The ever expanding number of regulations and agencies reflects their position that individuals cannot be trusted to manage their own affairs or cope with the social challenges through voluntary organizations. The inevitable consequence is that individual liberties have to be subordinated to the collective good, as determined by whoever happens to be in power."

[More]

The Drop in the Sea Up by 400%

2010-11-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

http://karmodi.com/ostap/?p=5404 \

According this article, the number of libertarian Republicans in Congress has risen by a whopping 400% - from one (Ron Paul) to five (senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul and representatives Ron Paul, Mick Mulveny and Justin Amash).

What Happens When Broke Economies Owe Money to Other Broke Economies? Hilarity Ensues.

2010-11-09T19:57:00.001-08:00

The Broken Window Fallacy

2010-11-09T19:49:00.001-08:00

The Other American Communist Party Gives Their Take on the Midterm Elections

2010-11-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

Why the Left Will Never Learn

2010-11-08T06:16:00.001-08:00

When one surveys the American terrain, from sea to shining sea, across the fruited plain, one is struck by the contrast, not only in terms of geography, but in politics. We see the relative abundance of the red states, men and women rising each dawn to set forth on productive, family-centered lives (to the extent that they are allowed to by the government). We see the human wreckage of Democrat-controlled cities, the rampant drugs and violence, the poverty, the crushing debt. We see the unsustainable burden that blue states like California and New York place on their taxpaying citizens, a model of irresponsible policy that the Obama-led federal government has heartily adopted.

For most of us rooted in workaday life, such a view of the contemporary United State is the political and economic reality. This is because we adhere to the truth. We stand in the present. We are grounded in the experiences of the past. We acknowledge failure. We know what succeeds.

But what of our political opposition? What of Barack Obama, who stubbornly believes that his policies are working, and that we just aren't smart enough to understand them? Or his followers, who are in flat-out denial not only that Democrat policies are not succeeding, but that they literally cannot succeed? Not only world history, but indeed, the American experience confirms that the Democrat's socialistic policies fail everytime they are tried, everywhere they are tried.

Why are liberals unable to learn from that experience? Why do they refuse to acknowledge reality?

To liberals, all illustrations of the failure of their policies are attributed to their unfailing scapegoats: Capitalism, corporations, and conservatives. Whether or not any causal mechanism can be identified, these are the hidden, invisible, ubiquitous forces that rule everything. Capitalism is monolithic in its expanse, synonymous in some cases with economic reality itself, and conditions our very consciousness. Capitalism is the reliable attribution for all evil in the world, which is embodied in their conservative opponents. This worldview is not nuanced, despite all their pretended learning, it is manichaenistic.

The conservative man for them is the man of the past, clinging to an outdated view of the world, one filled with human misery. Thus the mere existence of conservatives is a defiance to their cultural marxist designs, and one that fills them with hatred and revulsion. They believe that if everyone shared their opinions, then their vision will come true in reality. Therefore, all problems in the world simply means that liberals haven't social-engineered their "new man" yet. This mission to remake human beings in their preferred image (not their own image) is part and parcel of their secular drive to solve all problems and to create a heaven on earth. But what kind of condescension for your fellow man and arrogance do you have to have to set out on such a project? And what facts, reason, evidence will persuade you of the lunacy of such an endeavor? None.

For the leftist, his existential angst leads him to survey the world and see it all as an abysmal mess. He sees all around him war, racism, sexism, inequality, poverty and misery, even in cases where they don't exist, and concludes that it all needs to be "changed." It is all a grand experiment for social scientists to tinker with until they get it right, human suffering be damned.

Since it is the leftist's self-appointed task to right each and every wrong, his program demands complete, totalitarian control over politics, economy, society, the private lives of individuals, and even man's inner thoughts. Being a pragmatist in intellectual disposition, he is unable and unwilling to take his thoughts to their logical conclusion.

Each case of continuing government encroachment on the individual's freedom of choice is thus not perceived as threatening by the leftist. He simply sees it as part and parcel of elites creating a better and more just world. He does not see the danger of accumulating such power over people, for two reasons: 1) He believes that this is and the country should be a "democracy," meaning it is composed of "the people" (whose minds the elites should fashion and control) and 2) that the elites are necessarily well-intentioned.

Not respecting history, he does not see how even the best of intentions lead to disastrous results. The leftist does not get that accumulating immense power in a central government, even to do "good," sets the preconditions for deceptive, power-hungry demagogues to rise to power and to utilize it to establish and sustain a power base for the sake of entrenching the elites in perpetual power.

Not understanding human nature, and believing it to be readily manipulable, he thinks the next socialist experiment can be different. He may understand that people tend to be fundamentally self-interested, but he loathes this aspect of the human condition. Thus he rejects it and purges it from his ideal political system.

Though most reasonable men can see the innovation of the U.S. Constitution, and how checks and balances and divided powers promote the common good of the Republic by pitting "ambition against ambition," the leftist does not see the innovation of such an unprecedented charter of limited and prudential governance. Modern liberals do not see the hope that is provided to the world by America adopting a creed and enshrining a guiding document that empowers people to rule their own lives.

Furthermore, the leftist does not see how capitalism has led much of the world out of poverty and misery, and just as importantly, out of necessary servitude to the political class. He concludes from his peremptory view of "modern" history, that capitalism is actually the root cause of the world's problems. The prime mover for all tragic events is uncritically chalked up to "greed." "Greed" and benign self-interest are indistinguishable to him; coercion and willing trade are the same; the necessity of having to work for a living and a de facto state of slavery are one and the same. All must be leveled, including one's faculty of discriminating between right and wrong, good and evil, and just and unjust, as Evan Sayet has pointed out.

Therefore, for the leftist, the worse things get, the better things are getting. Collapsing the (capitalist) economy is good. Demoralizing human beings (so that you can reprogram them) is good. Creating political chaos is good, because that lays the foundations for seizing control of the government.

It is not that liberals really know what it is good, it is that they know what they hate. This is the essence of the left's guiding idea of "critical theory."

It is not that equality will actually lead to what liberals say it will, it is just that it will level the whole world as we know it before an upper crust of philosopher-kings (as they view the world's future rulers to be, quite naively).

Liberals aren't really interested in reality, but in manipulating people's subjective interpretation of it. That is why you will never force them to admit failure, why they are forced to parrot each other's positions, why they must intellectually and socially conform, why they must display a false air of mental superiority; it is a false front, and underneath the facade, they have no idea what they are doing, but simply are creating crises for the sake of creating crises until the "geniuses" of the left can configure things as they see fit.

That the world is infinitely more complex than their imaginations, that reality is resistant to their utopian visions, and that human beings have agency is beyond the grasp of such narcissists. And Barack Obama is surely a narcissist. There is only one way to deal with such untethered elitists: to identify them not as hopeless, benevolent dreamers, but as power-worshiping, unrealistic malcontents who need to be expelled from power.

MSNBC Commentator Chides Colleague Because He is Not As "Socialist"!

2010-11-05T10:24:00.001-07:00

Breaking Down the Democrat Breakdown

2010-11-04T21:56:00.000-07:00

Many months ago, I compiled a list of vulnerable Democrats that people should target by giving time and money to their opponents. I called this plan "Adopt-a-Democrat." These were the top 101 Democrat incumbents likely to lose, but their opponents needed a little bit of help.

The idea was to: circumvent the gatekeepers at the RNC; to avoid wasting money on lost races against likely winners; to refrain from overly supporting very popular likely Republican winners; and to put the combined resources of conservatives and tea party activists into districts that will likely shape up to be extremely close and within reach of possible Democrat voter fraud.

My method was to use the Cook Report's district rating along with a conservative estimate of a Republican Generic Ballot margin of +5 (it actually shaped up to be more like 9.4%, well outside of reach of potential Democrat fraud in most cases) to determine those who made the list. Using a similar methodology, I came up with a likely Republican pick-up of 62 seats. Let us see how my strategy would have shaken out if adopted (from more likely win for Republican to least likely win):

MS4 - Palazzo (R) defeats Taylor (D)
TX17 - Flores (R) defeats Edwards (D)
ID1 - Labrador (R) defeats Minnick (D)
AL2 - Roby (R) defeats Bright (D)
UT2 - Matheson (D) defeats Philpot (R)
MS1 - Nunnelee (R) defeats Childers (D)
MO4 - Hartzler (R) defeats Skelton (D)
OK2 - Boren (D) defeats Thompson (R)
AZ1 - Gosar (R) defeats Kirkpatrick (D)
MD1 - Harris (R) defeats Kratovil (D)
TN4 - DesJarlais (R) defeats Davis (D)
VA9 - Griffith (R) defeats Boucher (D)
GA8 - Scott (R) defeats Marshall (D)
KY6 - Chandler (D) defeats Barr (R) (squeaker)
SD1 - Noem (R) defeats Sandlin (D)
WV1 - McKinley (R) defeats Oliverio (D)
PA10 - Marino (R) defeats Carney (D)
AR - Ross (D) defeats Rankin (R)
OH18 - Gibbs (R) defeats Space (D)
SC5 - Mulvaney (R) defeats Spratt (D)
CO4 - Gardner (R) defeats Markey (D)
FL2 - Southerland (R) defeats Boyd (D)
IN9 - Young (R) defeats Hill (D)
NM2 - Pearce (R) defeats Teague (D)
NC11 - Shuler (D) defeats Miller (R)
PA4 - Altmire (D) defeats Rothfus (R)
PA17 - Holden (D) defeats Argall (R)
WV3 - Rahall (D) defeats Maynard (R)
AZ5 - Schwiekert (R) defeats Mitchell (D)
CO3 - Tipton (R) defeats Salazar (D)
MN7 - Peterson (D) defeats Byberg (R)
NC7 - McIntyre (D) defeats Pantano (R)
VA2 - Rigell (R) defeats Nye (D)
VA5 - Hurt (R) defeats Perriello (D)
AZ8 - Giffords (D) ahead of Kelly (R) (undecided)
FL24 - Adams (R) defeats Kosmas (D)
NY13 - Grimm (R) defeats McMahon (D)
OH16 - Renacci (R) defeats Boccieri (D)
TX23 - Canseco (R) defeats Rodriguez (D)
MI1 - Benishek (R) defeats McDowell (D)
NY19 - Hayworth (R) defeats Hall (D)!
PA3 - Kelly (R) defeats Dahlkemper (D)
FL8 - Billrakis (R) defeats Grayson (D)
IN2 - Donnelly (D) defeats Walorski (R)
MI7 - Walberg (R) defeats Schauer (D)
NY24 - Hanna (R) defeats Arcuri (D)
NC2 - Ellmers (R) defeats Etheridge (D)
NC8 - Kissell (D) defeats Johnson (R)
OH6 - Johnson (R) defeats Wilson (D)
TX27 - Farenthold (R) ahead of Ortiz (D)
WI8 - Ribble (R) defeats Kagen (D)
CA11 - McNerney (D) ahead of Harmer (R)(undecided)
FL22 - West (R) defeats Klein (D)
IL8 - Walsh (R) ahead of Bean (D) (undecided)
IL11 - Kinzinger (R) defeats Halvorson (D)
IL14 - Hullgren (R) defeats Foster (D)
MN1 - Walz (D) defeats Demmer (R)
NJ3 - Runyan (R) defeats Adler (D)
NY23 - Owens (D) defeats Doheny (R)
NH1 - Guinta (R) defeats Shea Porter (D)
NY1 - Bishop (D) defeats Altschuler (R) (pathetic)
TX28 - Cuellar (D) defeats Underwood (R)
GA2 - Bishop (D) defeats Keown (R)
GA12 - Barrow (D) defeats McKinney (R)
IA3 - Boswell (D) defeats Zaun (R)
OH1 - Chabot (R) defeats Driehaus (D)
OH15 - Stivers (R) defeats Kilroy (D)
OR5 - Schrader (D) defeats Bruun (R)
CT5 - Murphy (D) defeats Caligiuri (R)
KY3 - Yarmuth (D) defeats Lally (R)
MI9 - Peters (D) defeats Raczkowski (R)
NV3 - Heck (R) defeats Titus (D)
OR4 - DeFazio (D) defeats Robinson (R)
PA8 - Fitzpatrick (R) defeats Murphy (D)
VA11 - Connolly (D) ahead of Fimian (R) (undecided)
IL12 - Costello (D) defeats Newman (R)
IL17 - Schilling (R) defeats Hare (D)
ME2 - Michaud (D) defeats Levesque (R)
MN8 - Cravaack (R) defeats Oberstar (R)
NY25 - Buerkle (R) ahead of Maffei (D) (undecided)
TN5 - Cooper (D) defeats Hall (R)
TX15 - Hinojosa (D) defeats Zamora (R)
WA2 - Larsen (D) defeats Koster (R) (squeaker)
WI7 - Duffy (R) defeats Lassa (D)
CA18 - Cardoza (D) defeats Berryhill (R)
CO7 - Perlmutter (D) defeats Frazier (R)
NY2 - Israel (D) defeats Gomez (R)
NY27 - Higgins (D) defeats Roberto (R)
PA11 - Barletta (R) defeats Kanjorski (D)
WI3 - Kind (D) defeats Kapanke (R)
CA20 - Vidak (R) ahead of Costa (D)
CT4 - Himes (D) defeats Debicella (R) (squeaker)
IA1 - Braley (D) defeats Lange (R)
MA10 - Keating (D) defeats Perry (R)
NJ12 - Holt (D) defeats Sipprelle (R)
NM1 - Heinrich (D) defeats Barela (R)
NY9 - Weiner (D) defeats Turner (R)
NC13 - Miller (D) defeats Randall (R)
OH13 - Sutton (D) defeats Ganley (R)
WA6 - Dicks (D) defeats Cloud (R)
WA9 - Smith (D) defeats Muri (R)

Incredibly only 44 Democrats won of the 101 incumbents selected in this list (and there are 3 races with Democrats leading yet to be decided). This list covers 44 of the 49 total seats of Democrat incumbents defeated in 2010 (after factoring in Democrats who dropped out or who did not run for re-election).

For a frame of reference, prior to 2010, the incumbent re-election rate in the House trended 94% and above since 1996. This year the total incumbent re-election rate was 86.9%. Lest we believe that the main driver of this election result was "anti-incumbent" sentiment, 49 of the 51 incumbents defeated were Democrats.

Of the above-selected races, five are yet to be decided, and two are absolute "squeakers," meaning within a few tenths of a percent. Let's breakdown these races very briefly in terms of funding:

CT4: Himes (D) - $3,325,527; Debicella (R) $1,666,749
WA2 - Larsen (D) - $1,757,186; Koster (R) $906,627
NY25 - Maffei (D) $2,741,888; Buerkle (R) $551,804
VA11 - Connolly (D) $2,215,272; Fimian (R) $2,351,201
IL8 - Bean (D) $1,995,576; Walsh (R) $465,661
CA11 - McNerney (D) $2,562,444; Harmer (R) $2,524,417
AZ8 - Giffords (D) $3,151,929; Kelly (R) $1,288,074
KY6 - Chandler (D) $1,469,871; Barr (R) $1,366,479

The Democrats outdrew the Republicans in terms of campaign funding in 6 of 7 races, and 4 of those, significantly. Although it is impossible to say if more funding would have led to better results for the Republican in each race, certainly it would have bettered the Republican's prospects. It should also be noted that the Democrats funded their Senators' races very generously and it bore them much better results than those of the House.

A few last observations. Although there was a general red tsunami crashing throughout the nation, including in the state legislatures', secretary of state, and governors' races, a few deep blue states had erected levees, repulsing the general trend. These states were Connecticut, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, and for the Senate and Governor races, California. There were a few spillover effects, such as in several California House races, and in NY19 (whose campaign I worked on), NY 20, and NY24. But overall, this was the best day for Republicans since 1938. The results were driven by a repudiation of not just incumbents, and not just the economy, but of the policies of incumbent Democrats.

Senatus Populusque Libertarianus

2010-11-03T05:49:00.000-07:00

America's first libertarian senator has been elected, though the word "libertarian" is prone to ambiguous interpretations. Ironically, his name is a mix of Ron Paul (his father) and Ayn Rand (in this case it's just a coincidence).

How Perfect is This?

2010-11-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

As a metaphor for citizen-government relations, it is difficult to find a more perfect summation of contrasting ideals than the picture at right, which was re-posted by Drudge from Reuters.

Before the train of Our Pretended Lord and Master Barack Obama is a poor man begging for aid from his Royal Lie-ness.

Why is this image such a mirror of attitudes for the conservative pro-Constitution Right and the elitist faux-compassionate Left?

Prior to America's Declaration of Independence, the colonial settlers were effectively prostrate before the King of Great Britain. The Declaration was a shot across the bow to the mighty British, that we Americans would stand for liberty, as men, on our own two feet.

But it has been the objective of statists and elitists since time immemorial to humble men before them to bask in the glory of the crown's tender mercies. When free market capitalism arrived and allowed men to free themselves from groveling before the king and the nobility for table scraps, the courtesans were not amused. They plotted to capture the engine of free market capitalism and put in the service of the oligarchs, all the while blaming capitalism for whatever havoc and disruption the state caused in the process.

Free market capitalism is not an economy for the lazy, the timid, or the irresponsible. It is an economic system by, of, and for freemen.

And it works. It creates wealth, as can be seen in two hundred years of unprecedented economic growth and prosperity, despite all recessions and depressions. We came a long way from bended knee before kings, but the current administration, and the political class that carries out its decrees, would like to change all that.

Are we going to bow before King Obama, The Grand Dutchess Pelosi, and the The Prince Harry Reid like Obama does to Oriental Sultanates? Or are we going to stand up like men and tell our would-be rulers that WE DO NOT NEED YOU and WE DEMAND A FREE ECONOMY FOR FREE MEN!

"Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all."

-- Frederic Bastiat

Elections Have Consequences

2010-10-26T03:25:00.000-07:00

Some Hard Questions for the Hard Left

2010-10-24T06:35:00.000-07:00

A few hard questions for the pro-socialist 'dupes' out there:

If America were truly as imperialist and colonialist as most socialists claim, then why didn't it use the H-bomb prior to 1949 to conquer foreign nations? Or why hasn't the U.S. taken over Canada? Or why hasn't it taken over Mexico, instead of allowing Mexicans to immigrate unimpeded?

Or why does America liberate every people whose nation it goes to war with? In Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is fighting brutal, ruthless enemies and trying to liberate and protect people, and the American military, and its leadership, are excoriated by the left for doing it! Does the left enjoy seeing people enslaved and terrorized?

Or why is it that every nation America defeats in war or liberates does better than it did prior to that war? Japan and South Korea are the obvious examples. Japan was demolished by the U.S., with firebombing and nuclear bombs, and then was rebuilt and protected by the U.S. military. Fifty years later, American manufacturers struggle to compete with innovative Japanese firms.

In South Korea, south of 38th parallel, we see from photos taken from outer space at night a brightly-lit peninsula. To the North, we see a dark, desolate gulag-state with a tiny pinpoint in the PyongYang palace of Kim Jong-Il.

We can also add to this short list America's participation in the Normandy invasion, its subsequent protection of West Germany (and France) from the Soviet army, and the obviously positive effects of the Marshall Plan in regenerating Europe after World War II.

Or how can liberals claim to be so smart, while most are unable or pathologically unwilling to see America in an accurate historical context? I will proffer an answer to the last question.

The answer is two-fold. "Progressives" have a deep-seated aversion to history, believing that each 'moment' can be reinvented regardless of prior history. It might even be conceived that they view cause and effect itself as a type of "prison." In addition, their Marxist worldview prevents them from admitting that America could ever do anything good.

To expand on the this, Marxist theory provides the doctrinaire prism through which leftists shoot all their ideas. Marxism, and its offspring, provides a kind of mental security blanket, presumably enhancing "elites'" claims to intellectual superiority. In a way, the sheer bizarreness of their worldview edifies their sense of exclusive insight and separates themselves from the 'unenlightened' masses in their esteem.

Marxism thus leads to the perception on the part its adherent that he is participating in a type of struggle through which he will gain meaning and importance. In this way, it is very much like a cult; a godless, utopian millenarian cult. This is very important in the "post-God" Nietzschean world of the New Left, whose spiritual anomie led disaffected intellectuals to found a new religion, one that they could develop from scratch and mold, one that would be "scientific" in scope and methods of conversion.

Marxian elites distinguish themselves from the masses. That is, they differentiate between those to be mind-manipulated, and themselves, the presumed masterminds (and one has to give the 'dupes' credit for their sheer destructiveness and capability of leading millions to death and enslavement). Thus the "theory" does not hold in all cases, disproving itself. If millionaire Democrats can be socialists, and those in all social "classes" can be pro-capitalist, the theory makes no sense. The material (meaning degree of wealth) explanation for the world's ills is debunked.

In sum, Marxism and its offshoots feed a sense of narcissism and increasing radicalism; as Marxists' demands can never be fulfilled in the real world, they push harder and harder to make reality conform to their ideology; this of course requires that they be given more power and more control.

Thus, in a sick kind of way, America, as the most successful and powerful country of the world becomes inherently the main problem in the mind of the Marxist. All of the backwards and despotic nations, whose failed economic and political models are evident to the student of history, are attributed to the United States by necessity. America must be colonialist, imperialist, and worse, even if its history proves otherwise (thus the neologisms "neo-colonialist" and "neo-imperialist").

Additionally, a capitalist America cannot be admitted by the left as capable of doing good because this would mean by implication that people have free will and agency to choose good over evil. In other words, economics or material reality could not determine behavior in the way that Marx describes. And if it is the case that a capitalist America can do good, then how could the Marxist worldview be true? Who would be to blame systemically for the world's problems, and how could we as a collective change the world?

The emotionally indigestible and even unfathomable answer for the leftist is that we are all individuals, and the battle between good and evil is a personal one. We must all wage that battle alone, with help from others, of course, and with direct accountability to our consciences or God. The full import of this truth fills the leftist with existential anguish; because of his atheist, collectivist worldview, he cannot emotionally accept such a reality.

U.K. Gets the Idea: 'Useless' Teacher Banned from Classroom for Life

2010-10-24T05:30:00.000-07:00

From the DailyMail:

A teacher who is judged to be incapable of ever improving his work has become the first to be banned for life from the classroom due to incompetence. [Continued]

Oh God, can we start a movement here? We can start with the lawyers, then move our way through the social workers, therapists, government bureaucrats, teachers, professors, unionized construction workers...can you think of how much dead weight on the shoulders of actual producers can be shrugged off?

HALL-EH-LU-JAH: THE UK TO SLASH 500,000 GOVERNMENT JOBS!

2010-10-20T10:50:00.000-07:00

From BBC News:

Chancellor George Osborne has unveiled the biggest UK spending cuts since World War II, with welfare, councils and police budgets all hit.

The pension age will rise sooner than expected, some incapacity benefits will be time limited and other money clawed back through changes to tax credits and housing benefit. [...]

Mr Osborne ended his hour-long Commons statement by claiming the 19% average cuts to departmental budgets were less severe than expected. This is thanks to an extra £7bn in savings from the welfare budget and a £3.5bn increase in public sector employee pension contributions. [Continued]

Social democracy coming to a grinding halt across the pond - how will Europe-adoring Democrats cope with their cognitive dissonance?

Oh yes, it is sustainable! No, no, don't take the government jobs away! Not the welfare! Not the welfare!!!

The Blessings of a Free Market and the Perils of State Authority

2010-10-19T06:33:00.000-07:00

Americans, like all great peoples of the past, have fallen prey to a dangerous phenomenon inherent to the human condition: they take too much for granted. They live in a land of miraculous bounty and plenty, with wonderful comforts, affordable high-tech goods, and time-saving services available to the great majority of people, especially those who work for a living. While many Americans, and particularly upper middle class "intellectuals," urge the government to take from the "haves" to give to the "have-nots," these purported do-gooders neglect to notice that the economic system that provides them the ability to be "compassionate" with other people's money is being destroyed. These self-less folks are irreparably damaging the engine of wealth creation known as free market capitalism. The self-described elites who unremorsely do so fail to comprehend that the state-led economic policies they endorse is not progressivism, in any meaningful sense, it is regressivism. State-led economics are not the unknown in the human experience, it is the nearly omnipresent norm. It is free market economics in any semblance that is the rarity, and the prime mover behind America's meteoric rise to world power and influence.

Swimming in a Sea of Capitalism's Bounty: The Fish That Doesn't Know He's Wet
Upper-middle class "liberals," who are more accurately described as social democrats, and in some cases are outright socialists, tend to luxuriate in the fruits of capitalism's produce. For simplicity's sake, let's call all such people who defiantly oppose capitalism in principle "leftists." A typical leftist on a typical day might drive a Ford Focus hybrid to an overpriced coffee shop like Starbucks, type some self-writhing existentialist poems on his Apple computer, text-message his friend on his Blackberry begging her to read the dribble, and then cart off to university for a course in Post-Modern Modernist Art, whose classroom is comprised of massive steel and plastic structures, is outfitted with ample lighting, and is facilitated by state-of-the-art distance learning technology made possible by high-speed Internet cable. There the leftist will complete his Master's project, a post-structural critique of capitalist neo-colonialism using some parts from an old transistor radio, an upside-down neon cross, a number of plastic hula-girls who shake when you vibrate them, and some brightly-colored wax-dipped bullets (the shell casings only, of course). The leftist will receive an 'A' while completely missing the irony every time.

What the leftist will never realize is that what separates the United States from those it supposedly 'colonizes,' with merely an offer of trade no less, is America's capitalist economic system, which allows free-thinking individuals to create, risk-taking entrepreneurs to invest, and carefully-spending consumers to buy. America put a productive gap between itself and many other states that preceded it by millennia by adopting free market capitalism while other states continued on in tyranny and oppression. Simply put, the U.S. thrived while despotisms lagged behind. The tyrannies of the world could not beat the United States in terms of economic clout while still maintaining strangleholds on their respective peoples - therefore the U.S. had to be subverted. The statists of the world adopted and codified an ideology that would rationalize their totalitarian control over the economies, governments, and societies of the world, and scapegoated "capitalism," a term invented by Karl Marx as a monolithic descriptor of free market economies, as the source of all of mankind's woe. Here was a boot-licking statist ideology that so-called "radicals" could behind. Unbeknownst to most of these malcontents, subversion of the free market system leads directly to tyranny in economics and then in politics.

It never ceases to amaze how this point could be lost on so many presumably bright people. What could be more stark in the world than the prosperity of free peoples and the poverty of state-oppressed ones? Nevertheless, many intellectuals' animus is directed at an economic system that provides people with so much bounty, and not at the state that takes it away. One reason for intellectuals' misguided notions of state and economy is their romanticism of Europe.

Historically, European states put together impressive empires on the backs of colonial peoples, but the mercantilist ideology that guided them, and which men like Adam Smith criticized so vehemently, lead these European economic systems to fall to shambles once they ran out of foreign people to exploit at the point of a gun. America refrained from participating in "The Great Scramble" until it dabbled in empire-building at the end of the nineteenth century, by which time the Sick Men of Europe were wheezing as if struck by a furious bout of consumption. But by the time America was poised to take over the European empires' overseas possessions, the entire economic model of direct physical exploitation for economic gain was discredited. It was much more profitable to trade using modern transportation and communications technology, and to develop new markets.

Another reason for the persistence of statist myths among intellectuals is that they see the state as something that can be used to "help" people. They wax nostalgic about the heroic endeavors of FDR to comfort and aid the American people. They either don't realize or refuse to acknowledge that since the nation's founding, the darkest economic period in American history is the one that corresponds with the most state-intervention. Interventionist policies both preceded and coincided with The Great Depression. This is a point that is apparently difficult for some intellectuals to grasp. The central bank's easy-money policies resulted in the "boom" of The 1920s, a period of economic exuberance that bordered on the perverse. The inevitable crash was worsened by the Fed's restriction of the money supply following "Black Monday," only to be exacerbated by the trade restrictions of Smoot-Hawley. The Keynesian economics that guided the futile policies of the FDR administration would become the norm for the remainder of the twentieth century, providing the basis for the stagflation era policies of the 1970s, and the "stimulus" insanity of the Obama-led Democrats today. Though these statist economic policies were all irrefutable failures, they persist in the minds of the elites out of a lack of appreciation for the free market system that helps make America exceptional.

What more Americans need to understand in order to appreciate how special their country is is a broad overview that throws into relief their country's unprecedented trajectory from frontier wasteland to economic colossus in the brief span of two centuries. To provide a historical backdrop, let's start with an approximation of American colonial life - medieval Europe.

Life in Medieval Europe was perilously dark, filled with superstition, plague, and obeisance to Church and State. The practice of freedom of religion could get you burned at the stake - or worse. People had horrible tooth decay from lack of fluoride and basic dental care. The best known anesthetic was a piece of wood to bite on while someone performed radical medical procedures such as amputating a limb. Bleeding was a folksy cure-all that left its "patients" in a puddle of blood and likely dead. Some peasants built abodes with poor ventilation and died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Everyday one actually went and got one's own food, which required most of a peasant family's energy. There was no Whole Foods. There was a lot of dirt, and of what you could coax out of it by the sweat of your brow, you might get to keep half. The rest was confiscated by aristocratic landowners or the nobility. Imagine, if you will, 'progressivism'-cum- environmentalism on steroids.

Now conceive that out of this miserable state of human affairs a great flourishing takes place. This is no miracle, mind you; this is the result of a revolution, and we must pay heed that prior to any political or economic revolution, there is a revolution of the mind. Magnificent scholars like Thomas Aquinas rediscovered the ancient philosopher Aristotle. Aquinas, notably, integrated Aristotle's philosophy into his account of the Nature of God's universe. Superstitions began to be dispelled; Protestants began to challenge the hierarchical structure of the Catholic Church, and later, the state; and serfs departed from their fiefdoms to pursue crafts or trade. The mind was set free from the residual mystical thinking of past eras and science developed in leaps and bounds. Economies began to flourish, and the landed aristocracy, and the crowns they served, struggled to retain their grip on their wayward peoples.

Haltingly at first, but through trial and error, the statists developed an effective counter-strategy. At first, they exploited nationalism, a complicated bi-product of the workings of Johannes Guttenberg's printing press and an expansion of tribal romanticism. Later, statists co-opted the ancient communalist ideals collectively referred to as 'socialism' and adapted them to the modern era, which neatly broke down capitalist economic orders so that they can be reconfigured for totalitarian control by the statists. Surely, there were many, many radical "useful idiots" who presumably opposed the state enlisting such ideologies; but once they helped to usher in their "revolution," meaning the repeal of freedom heralded in by the Enlightenment, these tended to be put on the guillotine or in the gulag, respectively, and were heard from no more.

So we will proceed without a hitch to what the statists and the leftists both hate, and yet exploit: the market system. It has not been through altruism but through self-interest that the greatest good has been accomplished in the world. It is no less than this point that this essay attempts to put out of reach beyond all reasonable dispute.

Firstly, we can address the "necessary evil" of the state, and its role vis-a-vis the market system. While it is true that a market requires clear rules of fair exchange, such as contracts, and ownership, such as private property, it is absurd to claim that simply because the market demands these things in order to operate, and because it enlists the instrument of justice that is the ideal state in order to make sure it does, thus the participants in the market owe tribute to those in the state. Because in America the state was developed specifically to defend the rights of citizens, including private property (another way of saying that bands of robbers, including statists, are forbidden from plunder), then it undeniable that freemen precede the state. Being rationally self-interested, these freemen instituted a state as an aegis by which to administer justice. They did not create a state as an institution of coercion by which the statists are "free" to pillage and plunder the citizens as they see fit. Thus, in the spirit of Bastiat's The Law, we dash the absurd argument of the modern statist that men's rights devolve from government on the rocks of history and reason; men, and particularly the men who formed the United States of America, through reason and deliberation, enshrined rights as a free-standing code of morality that exists irrespective of government. It is the singular task of government not only to respect, but to actually defend, the rights of man.

We thus move on to the second matter, and that is the economic system of the United States. The modern amenities that are ubiquitous in our daily lives are almost without exception due to invention or radical innovation by capitalists; that is to say, individuals working on their own, or in small groups of mutually interested individuals, in pursuit of personal fame and fortune. The way individuals acquire fame and fortune is by making as many other people happy as possible with their creations. The way politicians acquire fame and fortune is by conquest, looting, the plunder and redistribution of resources, and massive erections to their ego that are often euphemistically referred to as "public works" projects. There have been noble politicians who have made contributions to mankind, and these typically consist of those who have led people in defensive struggles against invaders, or who have led men and women to freedom, and thus many deserve credit for these endeavors.

But when comparing the outstanding "public works" ordered by politicians to those in their charge to the inventions and discoveries of free, self-interested individuals throughout history, there really is no contest as to what kind of people have made the most people happy. While statists frequently point to such government-led projects as The Great Pyramids, The Hoover Dam, and The Apollo Project as feats that no individual could match, these works are nearly all predicated on innovations developed by individual scientists and mathematicians working alone, and nearly all require coerced labor or forcibly acquired wealth. And if we examine each of these feats, although large in scope, they are quite limited in the amount of men they benefit. There is good reason for this. Government officials are not motivated by the same pressures as individuals working in a marketplace. They have two principle motives for being in government: To use power for political gain and self-aggrandizement, and to control the people, lest they catch on and rise up against the politicians. Individuals in a marketplace have a different impetus for action: They seek fame and fortune, or at the very least, the satisfaction of their wants, and thus are pressured to respond to what others in society demand, while creatively employing one's talents and hard work to do so. The American combination of creative minds operating in freedom, risk-taking investors, the forces of mass production, and an interconnected marketplace utilizing mass transit and communications, has proven to be the formula for a powerhouse of productivity and want-satisfaction unmatched in world history.

If an American takes a look around himself, he sees that he is surrounded by marvels that could not have been dreamt of three decades, let alone a century ago, let alone two hundreds years ago. The American's world has been transformed over time by countless inventions: from Benjamin Franklin's ingenious contraptions, such as the Franklin stove and the bi-focal; to Henry Bessemer's design of the blast furnace, and the development of steel; to George Stephenson's steam locomotive and the building of the Transcontinental railroads; to Eli Whitney's cotton gin, Singer's sewing machine, and Levi Strauss' creation of denim; to George Bissel's discovery and development of crude oil for heat, fuel, and lubrication of machinery, and Edwin Drake's innovations in oil well drilling; to Thomas Edison's work in electricity and the invention of the incandescent light bulb; to Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone; to Marconi's demonstration of radio communication; to Henry Ford's advancements in mass production of the automobile; to countless other improvements to human life such as derived from gas ovens, Hoover vacuums, televisions, microwaves, commercialized flight, Apple computers, high-speed cable, satellite TV, cell phones, iPads - does the list really need to go on?

The statists' record of war, slavery, and colonialism, is put to shame by the track record of free market capitalists, who indisputably have advanced the greater good, selfishly and independently, of course. But the power of capitalism as it is coming at the direct expense of the statists,' the machinery of the state is devoted to the endless demonization of capitalism: by conflating it with direct imperialism; by blaming it for market crashes that arise most often from central bank policy; by arguing that the mere life necessity of work is akin to enslavement. In this regard, the Marxists, and contemporarily, the Cultural Marxists, come in quite handy for the progressive-statists. Since doctrinaire Marxism failed to predict the inevitable collapse of the capitalist system and its historically automatic replacement by utopian socialism, the Cultural Marxists instead attacked capitalism morally, in the realm of values, employing "critical theory" to try to rip apart the assumptions of the capitalist system on the foundational level. They engaged this war utilizing a variety of media, employing technology developed in the capitalist system itself, of course, such as music, movies, and art. They also infiltrated and exerted influence over institutions of communication and upward social mobility: such as universities and schools; news media; courts; unions; and the government bureaucracy. Meanwhile, under the guise of ensuring "safety," and providing "security," the statist-progressives worked to suppress capitalism through endless meddling, extortion, and market interference, and whose predictable disruption of economic relations was then blamed on "capitalism" itself. For this purpose, the Fabian socialism of Keynes provided enormously useful for progressive ends; and thus no amount of failure in economic practice of Keynesianism succeeds in deterring statists. The goal is not economic success, but economic control.

As a counter-factual, we can use a hypothetical imagined history to illustrate what might have happened if statist-progressives had been entrenched as they are now in America and Europe centuries earlier. The steam engine was developed by Thomas Savery, an Englishman, who spent huge amounts of money perfecting the technology. He patented it and made a good deal of money on the product, although the initial models had the deadly flaw of lacking pressure release valves. The explosions of several engines killed and maimed many workers. If progressives had been alive in Savery's day, they likely would have sued him into financial oblivion, revoked his patent, branded the invention too dangerous for operation, and that would have been that. The development of the steam engine and thus the locomotive would have been put back decades due to the meddling of so-called "progressives." This is not to say that I advocate the employment of dangerous technology, simply that 'caveat emptor' provide heady warning to any individual utilizing unproven technology. This rule should be sufficient in a civilized society to allow individuals to innovate, to suffer the consequences of their own actions, and to reap the rewards of their own successes.

But the proliferation of unfortunate deadly accidents in the industrial era is blown out of proportion and all instances are used as morality tales to illustrate the dangers of the "unfettered marketplace." Psychologically, the effectiveness of this "black PR" technique is predicated on the immediacy that is presented by mass, nearly instantaneous communications. Non-coincidentally, international terrorists have learned quite a bit from progressives about how to terrorize massive audiences by making illustrations out of a handful of victims. Yet the infinitesimal probability of such horrifying attacks occurring to the audience member doesn't resonate; he is often more than ready to turn over hard-won liberty for the illusion of security the statist promises to provide. But the power the individual turns over to the state rarely, if ever, results in security; the more power accumulates in the centralized state, the greater the tendency for terrorism of the populous; this time, undertaken much more systematically, and oftentimes, on a much, much larger scale that international terrorist organizations could ever dream. One might say, in passing, that terrorists will win against the West simply if they undermine the civil liberties that the governments of free nations are designed to uphold.

What Powerful, Centralized States Produce: Poverty, Misery, and Mass Murder
We have already noted that centralized states can and do produce humungous marvels that benefit relatively small numbers of people. But centralized states, especially those that accumulate significant power, produce something else: Mass misery and poverty.

By centralized states, we are referring to the model of government that has persisted since the days of Sargon I of Akkad through FDR's Great Depression America to Kim Jong-Il's North Korea. Of course, there is the matter of the divergence in the relative scale and power of centralized governments throughout history, but suffice it to say that for our purposes, the modus operandi of centralized governments is to accumulate authority and wield it over a population in an extended territory outside the locale of the government's capital itself. The underlying driving impetus, or essence, of the government is what defines it.

Thus we see impotent centralized governments in unfree, non-capitalist nations in Africa unable to guarantee contracts and private property, due mainly to a lack of social understanding of the concepts by the people there, and thus there remains a dearth of a sufficient number of people to organize in order to found governments that can preserve free nations.

In Europe, there has long been a tradition of elitist-directed societies that has outlasted the imperialist policies that allowed the respective states to get away with it. Confusing democracy with freedom, the masses instituted governments that promised to give them whatever they demand, thus avoiding the economic reality that they themselves have to satisfy those demands. This has produced little but extremely daunting amounts of debt, mitigated only by the subsidization of Europeans' collective security by the United States via the Cold War-era institution known as NATO. Americans not only built the engine of the world through free market capitalism, benefiting its trading partners in more regressive parts of the globe, it harnessed its engine to pull the dead weight of outdated regimes. While the folly of the Europeans' quixotic endeavors to obviate economic reality has begun to sunk in, the United States has elected a man to high office who has set off tilting at dilapidated windmills.

But what happens when economic orders crumble completely? Nothing good. The chaos of hyper-inflation has ushered in brutal, dictatorial regimes in Germany and Zimbabwe. Widespread starvation brought people to their knees in China and Ethiopia. Central governments have used its control over economies to reward the loyal and obeisant, and to punish the unruly and defiant. This should provide warning to the American people, whose statist regime is putting its economic order at grave risk.

Ultimately, unopposed statism results in mass murder. There are countless examples of this throughout history. Archetypes of these cases vary from the explosive national model, which leads to futile, self-destructive wars; to the implosive, internal decay model of socialism, which demoralizes a people and leads to the collapse of societies and economies; to the paranoid death cult model, which is just vigorous enough to sustain itself - for a while. Whether it be megalomaniacal exploits such as Napoleon's ravaging of Europe, the hand-to-mouth existence of the impoverished state of Castro's Cuba, or the collectivization and purges of regimes such as Stalin's Russia, the life-styles of people in state-dominated countries go from bad to worse to unspeakable.

The question remains for those impervious to reason and history: Could it happen here?

The Political History of the United States: Slowly But Steadily Growing Tyranny
What made America exceptional in human history and spurred its incredible rise to preeminence in the free world was not a history of imperialism, colonialism, and plunder. The United States did take part in the slave trade, and did immorally gain from slave labor. The Constitution of the United States, however, banned the importation of slaves before many of the supposedly "enlightened" European nations. America ended slavery for good through a bloody war between the states at approximately the same time as other European nations ended the practice. It is important to note that the United States did not lag behind the rest of the world in coming to realize the hypocrisy and the inhumanity of slavery, nor did it trail appreciably behind in ending the barbaric institution.

What made Americans great was their pioneering spirit, rugged individualism, and the willingness to earn an honest living. Neither desiring others to run one's own life, nor trusting the government to tell others how to live, most people avoided getting involved with the government. They preferred to work, raise a family, be left alone, and leave others alone. Unfortunately, a fatal seed lay in this passive resistance to government involvement. At one point, the seemingly infinite expanse of private property began ran out. There was no where left to run. Politicians schemed to "bring the state back in," and slowly fixed a loose noose over the country.

Meanwhile, federalism, the political architecture of the nation, was assaulted under the rubric of "democracy," which no serious political thinker in world history has ever endorsed. An anti-states rights agenda was driven along by an ever-meddling central government in Washington D.C., which finally found its justification to effectively eliminate the foundational assumption of the 'Union' under the pretense of eliminating slavery. While economic slavery is an unforgivable wrong, in no wise does it justify political slavery.

While the central government expanded its reach, progressives hastened to end the availability of private property, and thus the ability for people to escape the control of politicians. Progressives accomplished this both by restricting land with humongous "public" parks and acquiring huge blocks of federal lands, now a mainstay of the "environmentalist" movement; and then by perverting the concept of private property beyond all recognition with absurd interpretations of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, and later with affronts to the concept itself, such as "eminent domain."

The Jeffersonian vision of an America filled with self-ruling freemen in heterogeneous, self-organizing communities was being throttled, seemingly by design. The Hamiltonians had perverted the capitalist system with the introduction of a central bank, a flagrant violation of the explicit prohibition of the institution by the Continental Congress. The Whigs had picked up on Hamiltonian thinking by restricting free trade in the "national interest." Nearly every modern-day economic analysis undertaken using rigorous scientific standards suggests that protectionism is a self-defeating practice, which jibes with the general tried-and-true theory that freedom leads to prosperity.

This is not to say that free market capitalism is perfect, but it is superior to state-manipulated capitalism, the intermediate stage on the inevitable path to socialism, because the former disperses risks in an economic system. While some businesses in a free market system fail, at least the entire economic system tends not to fail at once, which we see in states where central banks command the money supply by setting interest rates. Where free market capitalist systems do run into problems is with huge influxes of specie currency, such as gold and silver, which is being used at the time as capital. But in the modern era, the risk of such huge influxes of gold and silver grows more remote. In sum, there is a reason for the growing tendency and frequency of recessions and depressions; the purposive influx of capital via systematic inflation of the currency by a central bank rewards the administrators of the banks themselves, and punishes those further along in the money supply chain through currency devaluation. In practice, this means working more, gaining less, and being more dissatisfied with the economic system. The invisible hand of the central bank, and not the market, is seizing the wealth of the people, while those of the economically ignorant perceive it all as "theft" by the greedy, who are driven by evil "profits." This lays the preconditions to sell socialism to the gullible masses.

The final ingredient in disenchanting a people with "capitalism," that monolith of the left whose notion apparently cannot be twisted enough beyond recognition, is progressive taxation. While the left bemoans the "maldistribution" of wealth in the nation, we must ask ourselves what it is that the left finds so repugnant about those who produce the best goods and services making the most wealth. It is very simple. In a free country, meaning the freest in accordance with true human nature, the economic, political, and societal spheres are divided. In an authoritarian state, politicians covet the economic power of the businessmen, and we should add, the social power of influential artists and commentators in the marketplace of ideas. In the corrupt state, politicians want to control everything, and thus all spheres of human activity tend towards "convergence," using the instruments of lies and coercion. We would be remiss to note that for world communists, this "convergence" does not end at the state level; but rather it is an international goal driven along by powerful factions in such coalitions as the European Union, the United Nations, and the (former) Soviet Union.

The point is that the United States is in danger of ceasing to remain the land of the free, and indeed, we find ourselves chasing the steadily moving shadow of the totalitarians, who are forging ahead almost faster than we can keep up. We must seize the high ground in the realm of ideas, and to do this, we must shine the truth on the would-be tyrants. This would at least vanquish the lies, and prepare us mentally to resist the coercion the potential subjugators are designing for us.

Mobilize for action, be of good courage, and defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We are in a war for the hearts and minds of the Republic, and as foot soldiers, we must never waver. Sound the bell of liberty so that it rings loud and true! Though it be broken, it shall not fail us in the fatal hour.

Anti-State Themes in Heavy Metal

2010-10-19T05:51:00.000-07:00

Megadeath's Symphony of Destruction.

Metallica's "And Justice for All."

Time to Stop Playing Around

2010-10-15T17:32:00.001-07:00

Great Observation from Dr. Thomas Sowell

2010-10-08T19:00:00.000-07:00

"One of the painful aspects of studying great catastrophes of the past is discovering how many times people were preoccupied with trivialities when they were teetering on the edge of doom."

Case Closed: Obama is a Socialist

2010-10-08T13:00:00.001-07:00

Check out this Obama quote from a recent Rolling Stone interview:

"We wrestled away billions of dollars of profit that were going to the banks and middlemen through the student-loan program, and now we have tens of billions of dollars that are going directly to students to help them pay for college. We expanded national service more than we ever have before ..."

It doesn't get anymore blatantly socialist, hell, communist than that. So you lefties can shut the hell up about us "right-wingers" not knowing what we are talking about when we call Obama a socialist.

Tribute to My Fax/Printer

2010-10-07T06:53:00.001-07:00

Tribute to my slow-ass feedbacking fax/printer. Die mo fo, die mo fo, die!

Ἀριστοτέλης

2010-10-07T02:09:00.000-07:00

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. The world is bad; let us learn to be independent of it. External goods are precarious; they are the gift of fortune, not the reward of our own efforts.

Bertrand Russell

Not only is he the last Greek philosopher with such an attitude. He was the last philosopher who faces the world cheerfully (perhaps before Ayn Rand).

How the Left Sees Us

2010-10-06T06:32:00.000-07:00

When I look into the eyes of a child, I see a unique individual blessed with a special set of gifts. A little person adventuring out into the world, someone who is irreplacable and precious. I want him to do the most with his life that he can, well-provided with opportunities to learn and grow, with the maximum amount of personal challenge and support to develop into an intelligent and capable adult.

The leftists see a child as yet another dependent, someone to be molded and created in their own image, to be brought up to be yet another member of a group: the "community," the "tribe," even "the nation." All children equal, none individual, none struggling to be excellent and therefore none superior or inferior. Faceless, nameless people to be managed from a centralized government far away.

Each individual is his own person. Each is a universe of emotions, thoughts, biology, and experience unto himself. Each is a miracle who will not be replicated in the history of the universe. Joy, love, sadness, and even anger, all are legitimate emotions that each person possesses. Each person has a psyche, which is the Greek term for both a mind and a soul.

The more centralized and bureacratized the government, the more abstract the individual becomes. He becomes an instrument of the elites to perpetuate their own power and advance their political causes. His will, his self-interest, becomes pitted in a zero-sum game with the ruling class, with ever-creeping coercion stealing away more and more of the individual's right to self-rule.

Collectivism and individualism are the most fundamental dueling ideologies of our age. Whether it be nationalism, socialism, or any other form of collectivism on one side, and a Constitutional government sanctifying the individual's right to life, liberty, and property on the other, the dilemma is the same: Who decides the course of the individual's life?

Democracy, the great political watchword of the West, is a form of majority rule that suppresses the minority, especially whom Ayn Rand called the greatest "minority" - the individual. When combined with increasing social engineering in the public forum, through state-run education, proxy "non-profit" agencies, and influence over media dissemination of ideas, "democracy" becomes transformed over time not into an expression of collective will, but a slavish extension of the rulers' will, over individuals.

As the collectivist government seeks to impose its will on a people, it insists that all individuals are rigidly members of "groups," and attempts to isolate and alienate those who do not desire to conform. The individual who expresses himself and endeavors to live his life in pursuit of truth and excellence, regardless of group esteem, eventually becomes ostracized, if not socially, then legally. Those who challenge the group or the government are termed "radicals" or "extremists" for wanting to live their own lives without interference. Autonomy is something the group cannot tolerate. The individual belongs to the group and its enforcement arm - the state.

The country's turn to collectivism has profound consequences, as we see with the socialized healthcare bill recently passed. The individual becomes but a tool of society to advance the goals set by the leaders. Over time, his behavior can "justifiably" be micromanaged in any way the ruling class sees fit; whether or not he smokes, what he eats, what car he drives, and what kinds of lightbulbs he uses. For the individual in a collectivist society, there is no legitimate objection to manipulation by the government. Indeed, in the ultimate, inevitable totalitarian form of collectivism, the government controls whether you are allowed to live or die. Socialized healthcare is a step closer to that dreadful reality.

The absolutely crucial, indispensable point for the majority to remember is that ascending to majority status in a culture does not grant it the right to utilize accrued power to engage in its own form of social engineering. Freedom is the ideal America was founded on, and that means removing government controls over the individual. This is an extremely difficult sell to those looking for revenge against political opposition, or who desire resources to engage in their own brand of political warfare against the other side, or who simply enjoy power for its own sake. It is very difficult to find self-interested individuals to send to political office who are rational enough to realize that it is in the long-term interest of themselves and the country they live in to uphold individual rights and to defend freedom from the government itself.

As citizens of this nation, the most effective way to deflate the drive toward collectivism in an ongoing way is to remove all bases of its ideological support in the public arena. Altruism, nationalism (which is not the same as American patriotism), any form of racism put forth by any individual, socialism, and any other form of collectivism should be directly opposed and contrasted with individualism. Private property, free speech, freedom of religion, gun rights, and free market capitalism should be directly and forcefully articulated as the rightful antitheses of collectivism. Do not concede to the collectivist on any point, even in the so-called interest of being "reasonable" or "civil." The leftists prey on people's social weaknesses as an inherent means to their destructive ends.

Political war is intrinsically an ideological war. Do not ever waver. Make clear your ideas and ideals, including your political concepts. Persuade people in stark terms what the fundamental choices are for our Constitutional republic. The leftists make their case, in both implicit and explicit ways, by indoctrinating each American for decades. We must dash their ideas on the rocks of history and philosophy at every opportunity, as clearly and as indisuptably as possible.

The Tower of Babel

2010-10-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

To be honest, I don’t quite share the hysteria over the Ground Zero Mosque. Unless something criminal is uncovered, the project is absolutely consistent with private property rights and why should anyone nose around someone else’s property? It’s none of their business. It is a ban on the project that would be a violation of rights.

To paraphrase Voltaire, I disapprove of Islam and believe it’s a violent religion but I will defend to the death every (non-criminal) Muslim’s right to build a mosque on his property. The fact that Muslims can build a mosque near Ground Zero, while non-Muslims can’t build much in Islamic countries, is exactly why America is America and Jihadland is Jihadland.

Freedom is first of all the freedom to offend other people’s feelings. 9/11 victims should not oppose the project. They should rejoice that, (at least to some extent) in America, no one - even a majority of the country - can violate your rights, including your right to build whatever you want on your property. Even if the majority doesn’t want you to build what you want. In America, the individual, not the majority, rules.

It is that freedom that made the World Trade Center possible. It is that freedom that the 9/11 hijackers attempted to destroy. It is that freedom that gave rise to the global capital of capitalism - the city where the human spirit, clad in concrete and steel, scrapes the sky, like the Tower of Babel - the city where anyone should be allowed to do anything, except harming others.

The Aesthetics of Hate: Design for Ground Zero Mosque Unveiled

2010-10-04T09:04:00.000-07:00

The Ground Zero mosque's design has been unveiled and it has already elicited comparison to the Fortress of Solitude, Superman's subzero headquarters. Most striking is the white exterior color overlaying a fractured, spindly facade. This is an excellent representation of the Islamists' mission in the West, to fracture societies under a veneer of peace and innocence, while spreading Islam's tendrils in all directions. It's sure to be a smash in New York.

Islam and Political Correctness Silence Upstart Dutch Politician

2010-10-04T08:56:00.000-07:00

And let's not forget about one of the other most potent totalitarian ideologies of our day, Islam, being aided and abetted by the destructive qua destructive neomarxist creed of political correctness.

Dutch politician on trial on hate speech charges

By TOBY STERLING (AP) – 8 hours ago

AMSTERDAM — Dutch anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders went on trial Monday for alleged hate speech, even as his popularity and influence in the Netherlands are near all time highs.

Prosecutors say Wilders incited hatred against Muslims with remarks comparing Islam to Naziism and by calling for a ban on the Quran. Wilders argues he has a right to freedom of speech and his remarks were within the bounds of the law.

If convicted, he faces up to a year in prison. He could keep his seat in parliament.

On his Twitter account, Wilders said the start of his trial was a "terrible day."

"The freedom of expression of at least 1.5 million people is standing trial together with me," he wrote, referring to the voters that made his Freedom Party the third-largest in national elections in June. [Continued]

Socialist Radicals Show Themselves in Public

2010-10-04T08:48:00.001-07:00

Environazism

2010-10-04T05:43:00.000-07:00

Just like modern envirowackos, the Nazis were against slaughtering animals. They preferred slaughtering humans. I believe it’s not a mere coincidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Germany#Environmentalism

The Nazis had elements which were supportive of animal rights, zoos and wildlife,[77] and took several measures to ensure their protection.[78] In 1933 the regime enacted a stringent animal-protection law.[79][80] Many NSDAP leaders including Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring were supporters of animal protection. Several Nazis were environmentalists (notably Rudolf Hess), and species protection and animal welfare were significant issues in the regime.[81] Heinrich Himmler made efforts to ban the hunting of animals.[82] Göring was an animal lover and conservationist.[83] The current animal welfare laws in Germany are more or less modification of the laws introduced by the National Socialist regime.[84]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_welfare_in_Nazi_Germany
In 1927, a Nazi representative to the Reichstag called for actions against cruelty to animals and kosher butchering. (…) Nazi Germany was the first nation to ban vivisection. (…)He announced to end the "unbearable torture and suffering in animal experiments" and told that those who "still think they can continue to treat animals as inanimate property" will be sent to concentration camps.(…) Goering also banned commercial animal trapping, imposed severe restrictions on hunting, and regulated the shoeing of horses. He imposed regulations even on the boiling of lobsters and crabs. In one incident, he sent a fisherman to concentration camp[12] for cutting up a bait frog.[

Envirocreeps' Creepy Video

2010-10-02T21:49:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to go off on a rant here...

Anyway, this video is Exhibit A of just how creepy the creeps of Envirowackoville have become. Utterly predictable, because those who assume a given ideology (or a hybrid of ideologies) are driven to fulfill the demands of that ideology (or ideologies, leading often to tragi-comic consequences). For environmentalism, that end point is the reverence of "Nature" for its own sake at the expense of humanity.

We are already experiencing hidden genocides as a direct consequence of the mass hypnosis of yuppies under the environmentalist spell; the malaria outbreak in Africa that could have been dampened by the order of millions of lives if Rachel Carson wouldn't have come along with her crank ideology that exalted the thickness of baby bird shells over the question of whether or not little human babies live or die.

Then we have the subsidization of corn ethanol, which has government's typical unintended (or intended?) disastrous consequences, in this case, the starvation and malnourishment of millions of invisible people in faraway lands. And for what? So that we can cut a negligible amount of greenhouse gases from our already negligible contribution to the big blue atmosphere?

This is madness, but it is so regularized and mainstreamed that many don't recognize it as madness. It is like the majority of people live in a house of mirrors their whole lives and when they finally see the truth reflected in a plane mirror, it appears distorted.

The moral truth is that the end of human life is human life; how to best accomplish that end is the question of political economy. And in direct contradition to the beliefs of the many, it is not collectivism and altruism that edifies life for the greatest number of people, but respect for each individual. The individualist creed entails allowing each man to be who he is and to adapt to his environment in accordance with his nature, while civilizing him through education and the development of rationality.

The mental order of the many is the political order of the whole. The respect for political order, guided by the correct morality, is the foundation of civilization. The protection of property is the mental security needed for people to create and produce without fear. Acknowledgment of the sanctity of the family by society is in accordance with man's biological nature and emotional needs. War against these basic tenets as the leftist does, with his destructive anti-civilization mentality, giving rise to various ideological manifestations, and society and order, so necessary for individuals to pursue happiness, is undermined. How ideologies either undermine or edify civilization must be understood if people are to take threats more seriously, and tragedies on a massive scale are to be avoided.

Likewise, the avoidance of ideology, as a belief that it is extreme in and of itself, is disingenuous and naive. Pragmatism and nihilism, the former shrugging at ideology and the latter rejecting it, do not absolve man of moral problems. These ideologies themselves only set man adrift to writhe in existentialist fugue. It takes principled opposition to counter today's next permutation of collectivist "isms" - "radical pragmatism." Remain oblivious to ideology and you are but flotsam and jetsam in the human Ganges. Principled opposition is required to counter collectivism and its precursor nihilism. Embrace collectivism or allow it to arise through stubborn passivity, and bad things are liable to occur. Adopt the individualist and objectivist ethos in words and deeds and live.

An American Version of the Taliban?

2010-10-02T21:17:00.001-07:00

This frequently renders it difficult, in studying the earliest historical and legislative records of New England, to detect the link that connected the emigrants with the land of their forefathers. They continually exercised the rights of sovereignty; they named their magistrates, concluded peace or declared war, made police regulations, and enacted laws, as if their allegiance was due only to God. Nothing can be more curious and at the same time more instructive than the legislation of that period; it is there that the solution of the great social problem which the United States now presents to the world is to be found.

Among these documents we shall notice as especially characteristic the code of laws promulgated by the little state of Connecticut in 1650.

The legislators of Connecticut begin with the penal laws, and, strange to say, they borrow their provisions from the text of Holy Writ.

'Whosoever shall worship any other God than the Lord," says the preamble of the Code, "shall surely be put to death." This is followed by ten or twelve enactments of the same kind, copied verbatim from the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy~ Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape were punished with death; an outrage offered by a son to his parents was to be expiated by the same penalty. The legislation of a rude and half-civilized people was thus applied to an enlightened and moral community. The consequence was, that the punishment of death was never more frequently prescribed by statute, and never more rarely enforced.

The chief care of the legislators in this body of penal laws was the maintenance of orderly conduct and good morals in the community; thus they constantly invaded the domain of conscience, and there was scarcely a sin which was not subject to magisterial censure. The reader is aware of the rigor with which these laws punished rape and adultery; intercourse between unmarried persons was likewise severely repressed. The judge was empowered to inflict either a pecuniary penalty, a whipping, or marriage on the misdemeanants, and if the records of the old courts of New Haven may be believed, prosecutions of this kind were not infrequent. We find a sentence, bearing the date of May 1, 1660, inflicting a fine and reprimand on a young woman who was accused of using improper language and of allowing herself to be kissed. The Code of 1650 abounds in preventive measures. It punishes idleness and drunkenness with severity. Innkeepers were forbidden to furnish more than a certain quantity of liquor to each consumer; and simple lying, whenever it may be injurious, is checked by a fine or a flogging. In other places the legislator, entirely forgetting the great principles of religious toleration that he had himself demanded in Europe, makes attendance on divine service compulsory, and goes so far as to visit with severe punishment, and even with death, Christians who chose to worship . God according to a ritual differing from his own. Sometimes, indeed, the zeal for regulation induces him to descend to the most frivolous particulars: thus a law is to be found in the same code which prohibits the use of tobacco. It must not be forgotten that these fantastic and oppressive laws were not imposed by authority, but that they were freely voted by all the persons interested in them, and that the customs of the community were even more austere and puritanical than the laws. In 1649 a solemn association was formed in Boston to check the worldly luxury of long hair.

These errors are no doubt discreditable to human reason; they attest the inferiority of our nature, which is incapable of laying firm hold upon what is true and just and is often reduced to the alternative of two excesses. In strict connection with this penal legislation, which bears such striking marks of a narrow, sectarian spirit and of those religious passions which had been warmed by persecution and were still fermenting among the people, a body of political laws is to be found which, though written two hundred years ago, is still in advance of the liberties of our age.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

The Tocquevillian Equivalent of the Owl of Minerva Flies at Dusk

2010-10-02T20:41:00.001-07:00

The growth of nations presents something analogous to this; they all bear some marks of their origin. The circumstances that accompanied their birth and contributed to their development affected the whole term of their being.

If we were able to go back to the elements of states and to examine the oldest monuments of their history, I doubt not that we should discover in them the primal cause of the prejudices, the habits, the ruling passions, and, in short, all that constitutes what is called the national character. We should there find the explanation of certain customs which now seem at variance with the prevailing manners; of such laws as conflict with established principles; and of such incoherent opinions as are here and there to be met with in society, like those fragments of broken chains which we sometimes see hanging from the vaults of an old edifice, supporting nothing. This might explain the destinies of certain nations which seem borne on by an unknown force to ends of which they themselves are ignorant. But hitherto facts have been lacking for such a study: the spirit of analysis has come upon nations only as they matured; and when they at last conceived of contemplating their origin, time had already obscured it, or ignorance and pride had surrounded it with fables behind which the truth was hidden.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Tocqueville on America's Ruling Class

2010-10-02T20:00:00.000-07:00

There are virtuous and peaceful individuals whose pure morality, quiet habits, opulence, and talents fit them to be the leaders of their fellow men. Their love of country is sincere, and they are ready to make the greatest sacrifices for its welfare. But civilization often finds them among its opponents; they confound its abuses with its benefits, and the idea of evil is inseparable in their minds from that of novelty. Near these I find others whose object is to materialize mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just, to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; claiming to be the champions of modern civilization, they place themselves arrogantly at its head, usurping a place which is abandoned to them, and of which they are wholly unworthy.

Where are we, then?

The religionists are the enemies of liberty, and the friends of liberty attack religion; the high-minded and the noble advocate bondage, and the meanest and most servile preach independence; honest and enlightened citizens are opposed to all progress, while men without patriotism and without principle put themselves forward as the apostles of civilization and intelligence.

-- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

I quibble with some of the language, such as all talk of "sacrifice" or "materializing men," not to mention Tocqueville's conceptualization of "democracy" in general, but it is still refreshing to read Democracy in America for its flashes of insight. This Tocqueville wrote in 1831?

The Final Battle

2010-10-01T20:02:00.001-07:00

Jon Stewart on Obama, Ayers, Beer Pong, and Subverting the Constitution

2010-10-01T19:43:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Indecision 2010 - Democratic Campaign Woes

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

Why Environmentalism is Ideologically Worse Than Nazism: Exhibit A

2010-10-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

Nan Hayworth's Bid for NY-19

2010-09-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

This is Nan Hayworth, a candidate for Congress in New York's 19th District. I am helping to manage her elections HQ.

What Ohio Tells Us About Obama - Hotline On Call

2010-09-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

What Ohio Tells Us About Obama - Hotline On Call

Democracy in America

2010-09-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

In America, it is nearly a ubiquitous truism that ours is a democratic nation. In popular imagination, all virtues spring forth from the fountainhead of democracy, and all vices consist of democracy's aristocratic or reactionary opposition. Yet we were blessed with the founders' vision to anticipate the instability and capriciousness of mob-majority rule, and our Constitution was imbued with individual rights, sanctioned by no less than the Almighty itself.

The terms democracy, freedom, and liberty are retained in our popular vernacular without meaningful engagement of the historical circumstances that gave rise to them in the culture. The intellectual doctrines of the progenitors of these terms, Locke, Paine, Madison, and Jefferson, among others, are obliterated in the people's education, while their persons are held aloft as exemplary and heroic. Over time, even as their names are retained for the expediency of politicians, these great thinkers' innovations and exhortations have tended to become distant, inaccessible, and ultimately, obsolete.

Over time such conceptual errors as the conflation of majoritarian fiat and individual liberty, surely propagated by the enemies of freedom, prove fatal. We are at pains to point out that the American revolution, which was not simply a revolt against the tax-slavery of Britain, but rather an unprecedented revolution of philosophical bearings away from collectivist tyranny, turned out as it did almost precisely because it was not the French Revolution. In France, democratic fervor soaked the decrepit land in blood, providing fertile soil for the regrowth of an authoritarian form of governance. Sprung forth from the chaotic masses was the spirit of nationalism, which renounced the emancipatory powers of self-rule, and instead crowned an emperor.

Thus, in revolutionary France, unbridled passion led the unthinking mob to dethrone a monarchical despot, only to cede all power to a nationalistic dictator. At least the monarchy had the wisdom of studied self-preservation on its side; the new regime, self-confident and poised to sweep up the continent, embarked on a heady crusade to remake the ancien regimes of Europe in its own image.

The impending disaster of the Napoleonic Wars foreshadows the experience of twentieth century Germany, whose National Socialist movement was nearly as romantic and just as collectivist; but the latter departed from the French by implementing "scientific" methods of manipulating and controlling society. We are loathe to point out that the great dictator was democratically elected. The formula strikes the modern-day American as hauntingly familiar.

From the great upheavals of the modern era, we may trace a thin pencil line back to the Fourth Crusades, whose impulsive sacking of Constantinople removed a Christian bastion stemming the rising tide of the Musselman. Therefrom we may leap back to the doomed Sicilian expedition of the Athenians, a hasty gambit that was pitched to the war-weary citizens by demagogues in the language of greed and glory. The dispassionate historian Thucydides displays the Athenian ploy's divergence from reality as a retreat into sheer hubris.

The common theme of these historical events is that there is no "wisdom of the people," as a populist politician of late would have us believe. The desire to promote "the common good," as the current opposition party has enshrined in its latest pledge to the American people, is as vacuous and venal as the politicians themselves choose it to be, and is merely an homage to the democratic status quo.

With each passing generation, we depart from the exceptionalism that is the hallmark of the American tradition, the individual and his capability of transforming the world through humility, hard work, and rational self-interest. America's reverence for the individual is what made it a shining beacon to the world, driving millions to come to this nation's shores. Today, the individual is culturally and politically absent, brushed away from the history books, and disappearing into competing democratic mobs.

As Alexis de Tocqueville put it in his prescient introduction to Democracy in America:

The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions without understanding the science that puts it to use; and his selfishness is no less blind than was formerly his devotion to others.

Self-interest devoid of rationality is anathema to civil society; and it is no surprise that the deposed oligarchs of the ancien regime would eventually seek vengeance upon the wayward children of the European and American revolutions by retaining the politically useful aspects of their historical movements, while stripping them of their redeeming cores.

In Europe, the supposedly ineluctable drive for equality gave way to uncritical reception of the primitive ideology of socialism. The irony of socialism is that it does not lead to the promised utopia of perfect equality, but rather to a state of severe impoverishment of the preponderance of the people, led by the naturally self-interested oligarchs who impose a socially ossified system.

The genius of the American revolution is that its core tenet of liberty nurtures men who learn to rule themselves. A hardy, self-directed people, innocently propelled to meet their own needs, provides the general equality conducive to what Aristotle considered the best society, the one directed by a vibrant middle class.

America's impending reversal from individual rights and resultant self-reliance to a political system of paternalism and patronage will foist conditions on the nation that will appear in many respects like pre-revolutionary France. The hard left has deliberately fostered revolutionary conditions in this nation and has sought to implement social upheaval that will engulf the American people and lead to the return of the state. The imagined revolution will feature the reaction of the increasingly mislabeled "conservatives," who now find themselves in the awkward position of radicals, strangers in a strange land.

Should the dreaded hour arrive when we are forced to choose, when our nation reaches some unforeseen but steadily approaching breaking point, will we choose the "democratic" revolution of France or the individualist revolution of our forefathers? Our country's clamoring for "democracy" will presage socialism, the chosen model of the beneficiaries of the welfare state, as well as the preferred ideology of elites who seek to return man to a neofeudal order animated by the secularized religion of altruism. If we persist in our ignorance of the perils of democracy, we will undoubtedly choose in error, and become prey to the hubris that precedes all calamitous falls.

The Decivilizing Effects of Government - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Daily

2010-09-25T06:23:00.000-07:00

The Decivilizing Effects of Government - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Daily

Greedier is Gooder

2010-09-24T20:07:00.001-07:00

Milton Friedman Discusses Economics and Freedom

2010-09-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

16:00-16:38 - PERFECT synopsis of the Obamacare debacle.

Time to Bring Back the Nuremburg Trials

2010-09-16T16:37:00.001-07:00

From CNS News:

In a video interview this week, White House Office of Science and Technology Director John P. Holdren told CNSNews.com that he would use the “free market economy” to implement the “massive campaign” he advocated along with Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich to “de-develop the United States.”

BreitbartTV comments:

In his role as President Barack Obama’s top science and technology adviser, Holdren deals with issues ranging from global warming to health care.

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States,” Holdren wrote along with Paul and Anne H. Ehrlich in the “recommendations” concluding their 1973 book Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions.

Is anybody guffawing now at my comment that environmentalism is more dangerous than Nazism? That the Nazis were selective in their hatred and their goals to exterminate the Jews, Slavs, and Roma, and are thus pikers philosophically when compared to the environmentalists, who at their core despise the entire human race?

We are in a race against time against the nihilists and anti-humanists who are the brains behind the "green movement" (and the cultural marxists who embed "green values" in the culture). Environmentalists at their core believe, along with the Nazi Heidegger, that "the essence of humanity is existence." Sorry, I side with Ayn Rand, who posited that the essence of humanity is life.

A Post-Mortem on the American Dream

2010-09-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

F.A. Hayek, from his essay "The Intellectuals and Socialism" (which reads oddly similar to Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Society"):

Speculations about the possible entire reconstruction of society give the intellectual a fare much more to his taste than the more practical and short-run considerations of those who aim at a piecemeal improvement of the existing order. In particular, socialist thought owes its appeal to the young largely to its visionary character; the very courage to indulge in Utopian thought is in this respect a source of strength to the socialists which traditional liberalism sadly lacks. This difference operates in favor of socialism, not only because speculation about general principles provides an opportunity for the play of the imagination of those who are unencumbered by much knowledge of the facts of present-day life, but also because it satisfies a legitimate desire for the understanding of the rational basis of any social order and gives scope for the exercise of that constructive urge for which liberalism, after it had won its great victories, left few outlets. The intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties. What appeal to him are the broad visions, the spacious comprehension of the social order as a whole which a planned system promises.

Perhaps Hayek here overlooks the visionary appeal of the American Dream, which drew masses of disaffected and suffering people from around the world to these shores to make their fortunes and to enjoy the fruits of liberty. The question arises: Is the American Dream the utopian, but nearly realizable, essence of free market capitalism?

The reason I ask is because if the American Dream is a rival to the millenarian vision of socialism, then it may explain why the socialists seek to crush it, in word and deed. The numerous articles by the leftist pseudo-mainstream press, of the ilk of Time and of CNN, triumphally declaring the American Dream "dead," in conjunction with policies that make it self-defeating to pursue wealth, seem to target the upwardly mobile middle class.

When people are rewarded not for merit or hard work, but by such tangentials as gender, race, or class, then the American Dream is effectively dead. The accumulation of wealth in a debauched capitalist system indeed becomes a "gamble and a lottery," as Keynes put it, and the system takes on the Rawlsian indictment that life under capitalism boils down to a matter of "luck."

When such fatalist sentiments abound, the middle class goes from the Alinskyite characterization of the "Have-a-Little-Want-A-Little-Mores" to beggars at the feet of politicians, seeking refuge from the capricious storm of economic life. Is Obama intentionally crushing the American Dream as a prelude to removing all competitors to socialism as the visionary pinnacle of the human story, the real "end of history" as we know it?

The Rosetta Stone of Economic Idiocy

2010-09-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

Evolutionary Psychology and the Antimarket Bias - Toban Wiebe - Mises Daily

"The Cuban Model Doesn't Even Work for Us Anymore"

2010-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

It took the Cuban commie thug half a century to realize that socialism doesn't work.

The Pit and The Pendulum Theory of Government

2010-09-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

In response to the notion that representative government is like a "pendulum," swinging naturally from extremism to conservatism; and that radicalism can be healthy if it leads a people to rediscover the nation's animating ideals:

With all due respect, I've never heard of this Pendulum theory in all the years I've studied politics. It seems to me like blind faith and discounts the steady erosion of rights and Constitutional order that this country was founded on. Our founders, and particularly the Anti-Federalists, certainly didn't believe in a Pendulum theory of government - maybe a Pit & The Pendulum theory of government.

The state, when unopposed, will inevitably devour a society and place it in servitude of the political class. Jefferson, for example, famously cheered the concept of a revolution every twenty years just to strike fear in the heart of the government.

The closest I have read of this Pendulum notion is Dick Stoken's The Great Game of Politics, which posits that in times of economic optimism or desire for prosperity Americans vote Republican and in times of economic fear they vote Democrat.

I am more inclined to side with those who founded the United States who warned repeatedly of how nearly impossible liberty is to regain once lost. Or those who lived in countries that turned totalitarian "out of the blue," like F.A. Hayek or Eugen Richter.

The problem with good-hearted people is that they assume that at their core, human beings are like them - good, compassionate, and kind. This is the Kantian fallacy of believing others think like you. It is simply not the case, as the ghosts of Treblinka, Buchenwald, Katyn Forest, the Killing Fields, Somalia, and on and on testify.

The U.S. is exceptional, but not because the people born here are inured to the evil that lurks in the heart of men. The U.S. is exceptional for its ideals, and for the political system that was founded in this nation, which nurtured the best in men.

The destructive social forces that are unleashed when political systems decay, through ideological deformity and good old-fashioned corruption, are quite similar from polity to polity, as Aristotle pointed out in his Politics. We are descending now into democracy as a transition to oligarchy. Both types of government are short-lived, as our founders knew, and they attempted to safeguard us from them. Both types of government tend to yield to tyranny.

When private property and individual rights are vitiated, voting cannot save the Republic. Elections become contests for mob patronage, and nothing more. The rule of law, once destroyed, fades in the social conscience and the institutional memory of the polity.

It is Pollyannish to believe that simple elections can change the obvious crash course of this country, in my humble opinion. Today's political and social climate compares unfavorably to the 1970s, the 1930s, and the 1910s. Our demise has been deliberately engineered and is occurring before out very eyes, and it is disappointing, but not wholly unsurprising, that people are unable or unwilling to recognize it for what it is.

Loyal Subjects Threaten to Hang Putin by the Balls

2010-09-13T06:04:00.000-07:00

A bizarre form of civil society is emerging in Russia. Angered by the government's sheer incompetence and its failure to handle an unprecedented series of wildfires, residents of the Nizhny Novgorod Region are calling for hanging Putin and his ministers "by the balls" (literally) at a meeting with him originally intended to be a neat propaganda piece. Logically enough, the event was ignored by the state-controlled media. Meanwhile, the phrase was borrowed from the dictator himself (Putin promised to hang Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili by the balls some time ago).

Radicals or Slaves

2010-09-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

It is has taken two centuries for us to get to this point. With freedom hanging by a thread, the first nation to be founded by radicals may plummet into statism like all the rest. What will it take for us to be worthy of our founders' legacy? What will it take for Americans to take freedom seriously and to fight for it, with all the heart and spirit they have got?

Since the election of Barack Obama, the government has waylaid the American people with a relentless onslaught of unprecedented and frankly, un-American measures. While many greeted this fundamental change of political environment with unfounded hope, it has horrified millions, leading to the formation of a nascent opposition known as the "tea party movement."

Even so, there is a great, "independent" middle that is still so devoid of principle they are unable to take a position on the direction of the country. These self-described "moderates" are either unsure what party to turn to, are apathetic and otherwise pre-occupied with work-a-day life in the sour economy, or are escaping through omnipresent entertainment.

It is beyond reasonable discussion that the United States is being taken over, by stealth, subterfuge, and outright socialism, by a radical cadre of elites. The leftists have admitted as much in word and in deed. And yet a huge proportion of the nation sits on the fence. How did the country get to this turning point, and what should be done to begin to reverse the progressive tide?

The process of de-Americanization has taken place over decades, at least since the Progressive Era. The pivotal institutions the radicals have used to "fundamentally transform" the nation have been public education and the Federal Reserve Bank.

Education in the United States is currently guided by the Department of Education and carried out by radical unions such as the NEA. And now, due to the passage of Obamacare, the government controls college student loans. The history of public education in the United States is seedy, and is guided to a great extent by the thinking of the radical pragmatist John Dewey. As "the father of progressive education" modestly put it:

"I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being...The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism, resplendent with the promise of a world in which the never-realized Christian ideal of 'love thy neighbor' will finally be achieved."

Pretty heady stuff for someone who is often described as a "pragmatist" and a relativist. It has taken decades for the public education system to reveal itself in the minds of Americans as the radical institution it has always been. It will take an immense effort of adults, and particularly, those who matured in the Reagan era, to combat the entrenched radicals. The younger generation is virtually lost, though we must assiduously work to instill common sense in them, and undermine the radical narrative at every convenient opportunity.

Contrary to popular opinion, "the Fed" is not merely a sop for well-connected banks and corporations, it is a plank straight out of the Communist Manifesto. It was formed in 1913, under the statist progressive Woodrow Wilson. The words of John Maynard Keynes, who has become the dominant mind of American economics, bear repeating:

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. – As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery. [...]

"Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

There can be no economic reality in a system whose currency issuance is controlled by a central bank. That is the bottom line. As long as fiat currency exists, Americans will be pawns of the government. The political will to fight "The Fed" is precisely tied to the ability of those who understand the problem to articulate it to those who would otherwise have unquestioning faith in the government's ability to maintain a sound currency, and to present the alternative of asset-backed currency.

Education must be liberated from government control and sound currency must be instituted if America is to become a free, prosperous country. Until that time, any talk that we are a free nation is a pleasant illusion, and one that fosters a sense of complacency. We have lost America and we are not free. The government is an alien element, intent on preparing us for servitude to the state. It will take a revolution in ideology and morality to develop the judgment of enough Americans to stand on principle and to find the political will to reinstitute freedom. We are forced to make an uncomfortable choice: We are either radicals for freedom or future slaves.

The O-Bible: Ayers' Rod

2010-09-11T20:17:00.001-07:00

Exodus: Chapter 3

3:19 And I am sure that the Pharaoh Bush will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand.

3:20 And I will stretch out my hand, and smite America with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.

3:21 And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Americans: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty:

3:22 But every woman shall borrow of her neighbor, and of her that mortgageth her house, earrings of silver, and noserings of gold, and tie-dyed raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall not be able to distinguish the two.

Chapter 4

4:1 And Soros answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, Obama hath not appeared unto thee.

4:2 And Obama said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A microphone.

4:3 And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a teleprompter; and Soros fled from before it.

4:4 And Obama said unto Soros, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the cord. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a microphone in his hand:

4:5 That they may believe that Obama, the dreams of my father, the god of Matthews, the god of Olbermann, and the god of Thomas, hath appeared unto thee.

4:6 And Obama said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was barren.

4:7 And he said, Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was loaded with a wad of cash.

4:8 And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the latter sign.

4:9 And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the gulf, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the gulf shall become blood upon the dry land.

4:10 And Soros said unto Obama, O my lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slurred of speech, and of a forked tongue.

4:11 And Obama said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth? or who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind, or the Democrat? have not I, the lord?

4:12 Now therefore go, and I will be thy mouth, and shall say the words that are to be said.

4:13 And he said, O my lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.

4:14 And the anger of Obama was kindled against Soros, and he said, Is not Ayers thy brother? I know that he can write well, and probably speaks just as well. And also, behold, he cometh forth to meet thee: and when he seeth thee, he will be glad in his heart.

4:15 And thou shalt speak unto him, and my words shall come from thy mouth: and I will be thy mouth, and with his pen, he will teach you what I shall do.

4:16 And he shall be my spokesman unto the people: and he shall be, even he shall be to them instead of my word, and thee shalt be to him instead of god.

4:17 And thou shalt take this microphone in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.

4:18 And Soros said, I shall go and speak of peace.

4:19 And Obama said unto Soros, Go, return into America: for all the German Jews are are dead which sought life.

4:20 And Soros took his wife and his sons, and set them upon his ass, and he returned to the land of America: and Soros took the microphone of Obama in his hand.

4:21 And Obama said unto Soros, When thou goest to return into America, see that thou do all those wonders before the Pharaoh Bush, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

4:22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Obama, these children of Marxia are my sons, even my firstborn:

4:23 And I say unto thee, Let my people go, that they may serve me: and if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will oppose thy war, even thy surge.

4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that Obama met him, and sought to ridicule him.

4:25 Then his wife took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of his son and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

4:27 And Obama said to Ayers, Go into the wilderness to meet Soros. And he went, and met him on the mount of Soetero, and kissed him.

4:28 And Soros told Ayers all the words of Obama who had sent him, and all the signs which he had commanded him.

4:29 And Soros and Ayers went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Marxia:

4:30 And Ayers spake all the words which Obama had spoken unto Soros, and did the signs in the sight of the people.

4:31 And the people believed: and when they heard that Obama had visited the children of Marxia, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.

Chapter 5

5:1 And afterward Soros and Ayers went in, and told the Pharaoh Bush, Thus saith Obama god of the Marxians, Let my people go, that they may hold a sacrifice unto me in the wilderness.

5:2 And Pharaoh said, Who is this Obama, that I should obey his voice to let the go? I know not this Obama, neither will I let these people go.

5:3 And they said, The god of the Marxians hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, five days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto Obama our god; lest he fall upon us with stimulus, or with increased taxes.

5:4 And the king of America said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Soros and Ayers, let the people off from work? Do they not already have Labor Day and Martin Luther King day? get you unto your burdens.

5:5 And the Pharaoh Bush said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.

5:6 And Pharaoh commanded the same day the social workers of the people, and their officers, saying,

5:7 Ye shall no more give the people cheese to make Velveeta bricks, as heretofore: let them go and gather cheese for themselves.

5:8 And the tale of the cheese bricks, which they did get from the Salvation Army heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought thereof: for they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to Obama.

5:9 Let there be more work be laid upon the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard vain words.

5:10 And the social workers of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith the Pharaoh Bush, I will not give you cheese.

5:11 Go ye, get you cheese where ye can find it: yet not ought of your work shall be diminished.

5:12 So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of America to gather peanut butter instead of cheese.

5:13 And the social workers hasted them, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was cheese.

5:14 And the officers of the children of Marx, which Pharaoh's social workers had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making cheese brick both yesterday and to day, as heretofore?

5:15 Then the officers of the children of Marx came and cried unto the Pharaoh Bush, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy wards of the state?

5:16 There is no cheese given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make cheese bricks: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people.

5:17 But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to Obama.

5:18 Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no cheese be given you, yet shall ye deliver the tale of cheese bricks.

5:19 And the officers of the children of Marxia did see that they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not diminish ought from your cheese bricks of your daily task.

5:20 And they met Soros and Ayers, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh:

5:21 And they said unto them, Obama look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savior to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put an M-16 in their hand to slay us.

5:22 And Soros returned unto Obama, and said, Obama, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me?

5:23 For since I came to Pharaoh to speak thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people cheese at all.

Chapter 6

6:1 Then Obama said unto Soros, Now shalt thou see what I will do to the Pharaoh Bush: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of this land.

6:2 And Obama spake unto Soros, and said unto him, I am THE OBAMA:

6:3 And I appeared unto Matthews, unto Olbermann, and unto Thomas, by the name of Barack Hussein Obama, but by my name Soetero was I not known to them.

6:4 And I have also established my covenant with them, to render unto the radical left the land of Washington, the land of the pilgrims, wherein they were strangers.

6:5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Marxia, whom the Americans keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant.

6:6 Wherefore say unto the children of Marxia, I am The Obama, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Americans, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great reparations:

6:7 And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a god: and ye shall know that I am Obama your god, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of America.

6:8 And I will bring you in unto the promised land, concerning that which I did swear to give it to Matthews, to Olbermann, and to Thomas; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am The Obama.

6:9 And Soros spake so unto the children of Marxia in the voice of Obama: but they hearkened not unto Soros for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.

6:10 And the Obama spake unto Soros, saying,

6:11 Go in, speak unto the Pharaoh Bush king of America, that he let the children of Marxia go.

6:12 And Soros spake before Obama, saying, Behold, the children of Marxia have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?

6:13 And Obama spake unto Soros and unto Ayers, and gave them a charge unto the children of Marxia, and unto the Pharaoh Bush king of America, to bring them out of the land of America.

The O-Bible: Soros and The Burning Flag

2010-09-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

Exodus: Chapter 3

3:1 Now Soros kept the flock of Kaine, the priest of Moronia: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of Obama, even to Soetero.

3:2 And the angel of Obama appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a burning American flag: and he looked, and, behold, the flag burned with fire, and the flag was not consumed.

3:3 And Soros said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the flag is not burnt.

3:4 And when Obama saw that he turned aside to see, Obama called unto him out of the midst of the flag, and said, Soros, Soros. And he said, Here am I.

3:5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is Ground Zero.

3:6 Moreover he said, I am Obama, the god of Matthews, the god of Olbermann, and the god of Thomas. And Soros hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon Obama. For Obama, you see, was not fully white.

3:7 And Obama said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in the ghetto, and have heard their cry by reason of their capitalist taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;

3:8 And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the capitalists, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Reaganites, and the Bushites, and the Jeffersonians, and the Washingtonians, and the Jacksonians, and the Lincolnites.

3:9 Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Marxia is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Americans oppress them.

3:10 Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto the Pharaoh Bush II, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Marxia out of America.

3:11 And Soros said unto Obama, Who am I, that I should go unto the Pharaoh Bush, and that I should bring forth the children of Marxia out of America?

3:12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of America, ye shall serve Obama upon this hill.

3:13 And Soros said unto Obama, Behold, when I come unto the children of Marxia, and shall say unto them, The dreams of my father hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

3:14 And Obama said unto Soros, YES WE CAN: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Marxia, YES WE CAN hath sent me unto you.

3:15 And Obama said moreover unto Soros, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Marxia, the dreams of my father, the god of Matthews, the god of Olbermann, and the god of Thomas, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.

3:16 Go, and gather the elders of the tribe of Marxia together, and say unto them, the dreams of my father, the god of Matthews, of Olbermann, and of Thomas, appearing on the cable news networks, saying, Obama is truly the messiah, yea, Obama is truly the One:

3:17 And I have said, I will bring them up out of the affliction of America to claim the land of the Reaganites, and the Bushites, and the Jeffersonians, and the Washingtonians, and the Jacksonians, and the Lincolnites, which has been told to be a land flowing with milk and honey.

3:18 And they shall hearken to mine echoing voice, and thy fat wallet: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Marxia, unto the king of America, and ye shall say unto him, Obama of the Husseinites hath met with us, and we seek fundamental change: and now let us go, we beseech thee, five days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice for Obama.

The O-Bible: Chicago and Aurora

2010-09-09T21:25:00.001-07:00

Chapter 18

18:20 And Obama said, Because the political machine of Chicago and Aurora is great, and because their voter turnout is very advantageous;

18:21 I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the plan for the mid-term elections, of who is to come after me; and of who will pay to play, we need to know.

18:22 And Obama's staff turned their faces from thence, and went toward Chicago: but Mayor Daley stood yet before Obama.

18:23 And Mayor Daley drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the reliable Democrats along with the wicked Republicans?

18:24 Peradventure there be fifty Republicans within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty Democrats that are therein?

18:25 That be far from thee to do after this manner, to decimate the Democrats with the Republicans and that the progressives should be as the conservatives, that be far from thee: Shall not the Obamessiah do right?

18:26 And Obama said, If I find in Chicago fifty Democrats within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes.

18:27 And Mayor Daley answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto Obama:

18:28 Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty Democrats: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? After all, we can always register five dead Democrats to take their place. And Obama said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it.

18:29 And he spake unto him yet again, and said, Peradventure there shall be forty found there. And he said, I will not do it for forty's sake.

18:30 And he said unto him, Oh let not Obama be angry, and I will speak: Peradventure there shall thirty be found there. And he said, I will not do it, if I find thirty there.

18:31 And he said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto Obama: Peradventure there shall be twenty found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for twenty's sake.

18:32 And he said, Oh let not Obama be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake.

18:33 And Obama went his way, as soon as he had left communing with Mayor Daley: and Mayor Daley returned unto his place.

Chapter 19

19:1 And there came two bagmen to the Chicagoland area at even; and Blago sat in a cafe in Aurora: and Blago seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground;

19:2 And he said, Behold now, good fellows, turn in, I pray you, into your master's house, and party all night, and drink some scotch, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will instead negotiate in your office all night.

19:3 And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in to him, and entered into his office; and he made them a feast, and did bake a nice Chicago-style pie, and they did eat. And one of them had a tape recorder.

19:4 But before they lay down, the police of the city, even the men of Aurora, compassed the house round:

19:5 And they called unto Blago, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them.

19:6 And Blago went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him,

19:7 And said, I pray you, brethren, do not frame me so wickedly.

19:8 Behold now, I have just purchased two Thai prostitutes which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these bagmen do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof.

19:9 And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Blago, and came near to break the door.

19:10 But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Blago into the office to them, and shut to the door.

19:11 And they smote the men that were at the door of the office with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door.

19:12 And the men said unto Blago, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place:

19:13 For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of Obama; and Obama hath sent us to destroy it.

19:14 And Blago went out, and spake unto his attorneys, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for Obama will take down this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his staff.

19:15 And when the morning arose, then the bagmen hastened Blago, saying, Arise, take thy lawyers, and thy staff, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city.

19:16 And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his lawyer, and upon the hand of his two staff; Obama being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.

19:17 And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; do not mention my name, neither stay thou in local politics; escape to obscurity, lest thou be consumed.

19:18 And Blago said unto them, Oh, not so, Obama:

19:19 Behold now, I am planning to disclose what I know about pay to play, and thou hast heard all about it from thy chief of staff the serpent Rahm, which thou both sharest all things; and I cannot escape to obscurity, lest some evil take me, or I go to prison and get shivved:

19:20 Behold now, this courthouse is near to flee unto: Oh, let me escape thither, (is the fix not in?) and my ego shall live.

19:21 And he said unto him, See, I have accepted thee concerning this thing also, that I will not overthrow this political machine, for that which thou hast spoken.

19:22 Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither. Therefore the location of the courthouse will be near Chicago.

19:23 The sun was risen upon the earth when Blago entered into the courthouse. And Blago did what he was told and did not testify against Obama.

19:24 Then Obama rained upon Chicago and upon Aurora brimstone and fire from out of heaven;

19:25 And he overthrew those cities' political machines, and took control of all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.

19:26 But his lawyer mentioned the name Obama, and he became a pillar of salt.

19:27 And Mayor Daley got up early in the morning to the place where he stood before Obama:

19:28 And he looked toward Chicago and Aurora, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.

19:29 And it came to pass, when Obama destroyed the cities of the plain, that Obama forced Mayor Daley to resign, and sent Blago out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew all the cities in which Blago dwelt.

The O-Bible: Al Gore and The Yacht

2010-09-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

Chapter 6

6:1 And it came to pass, when men began to overpopulate the face of the earth, and filthy human children were born unto them,

6:2 That the sons of Obama saw that the human children were too many; and they clamored for him to declare a one child policy.

6:3 And Obama said, My soaring oratory shall not always strive with man, for he is but flesh: yet my days in office shall be but fourteen hundred and sixty days. Yea, it is better to implement abortion on demand.

6:4 There were giant welfare payments in those days; and also after that, when the sons of Obama came on to the daughters of men, and they bare children to them; Obama was unto them all their sugar daddy.

6:5 And Obama saw that the laziness of man was great in the earth, and the only channels man watched were ESPN and Playboy continually. They seemed not to care any longer for his continual prime-time speeches.

6:6 And it repented Obama that he was president over the entire earth, and it grieved him in his heart.

6:7 And Obama said, I will destroy the men whom do not approve of my job performance from the face of the earth; both men, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; all the ugly animals (though not the cute ones, which had protected status) for it repenteth him that he were president over them.

6:8 But Al Gore found grace in the eyes of Obama.

6:9 These are the generations of Gore: Gore was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Gore walked with Obama.

6:10 And Gore begat three sons, Jones, Mann, and Hansen.

6:11 The earth also was corrupt before Obama, and the earth was filled with carbon dioxide.

6:12 And Obama looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for the unfettered free market had corrupted all upon the earth.

6:13 And Obama said unto Gore, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with carbon dioxide through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with global warming.

6:14 Find thee a luxury yacht of non-petroleum based polymers; viewing rooms for thy movie An Inconvenient Truth shalt thou make in the yacht, and thou shalt pitch it within and without with used car salesman-like aplomb.

6:15 And this is the fashion of the yacht which thou shalt find: The length of the yacht shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

6:16 A big screen home theater shalt thou make in the yacht, and with projectors and power-point presentations though shalt fill it; and thou shalt quote nodding scientific experts; with clever editing and false images shalt thou make thy them.

6:17 And, behold, man shall bring upon himself a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die until all shall call upon me for mercy, and I shall lower the waters.

6:18 But with thee will I establish a climate exchange; and thou shalt come in with me in my venture, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons' wives with thee.

6:19 And every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the yacht, to keep them alive with thee; two each of undisclosed gender.

6:20 Of penguins after their kind, and polar bears after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.

6:21 And take thou unto thee some granola, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.

6:22 Thus did Gore; according to all that Obama commanded him, so did he.

Chapter 7

7:1 And Obama said unto Gore, Come thou all into thy viewing room in the yacht; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation.

7:2 Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens: and of beasts that are not clean by two.

7:3 Of penguins also by sevens; to keep their seed alive upon the face of all the earth.

7:4 For yet seven days, it will rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance shall be wiped off the face of the earth.

7:5 And Gore did according unto all that Obama commanded him.

7:6 And Gore's movie was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.

7:7 And Gore went in, and his sons, and his ex-wife Tipper, and his sons' wives with him, and his masseuse, into the yacht, because of the waters of the flood.

7:8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,

7:9 There went in two and two unto Gore into the yacht, as Obama had commanded Gore.

7:10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.

7:11 In the six hundredth year of Gore's movie, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

7:12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

7:13 In the selfsame day entered Gore, and Hansen, and Mann, and Joneseth, the sons of Gore, his masseuse, and Gore's ex-wife Tipper, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the yacht;

7:14 They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort, and especially penguins.

7:15 And they went in unto Gore into the yacht, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

7:16 And they that went in, went in as Obama had commanded him: and he shut him in.

7:17 And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the luxury yacht, and it was lifted up above the earth.

7:18 And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the yacht went upon the face of the waters.

7:19 And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the metropolitan areas, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.

7:20 Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and even the Himalayan icecaps were covered.

7:21 And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:

7:22 All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.

7:23 And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Gore only remained alive, and they that were with him in the yacht.

7:24 And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

Chapter 8

8:1 And Obama remembered Gore, and every living thing, and all the other animals that were with him in the yacht: and Obama passed wind over the earth, and the waters assuaged;

8:2 The fountains also of the deep and the windows of heaven Obama stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained;

8:3 And Obama lifted his hand and the waters returned from off the earth continually: and after the end of the hundred and fifty days the waters were abated.

8:4 And the yacht rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountain Ismellarat.

8:5 And the waters decreased continually until the tenth month: in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, were the tops of the mountains seen.

8:6 And it came to pass at the end of forty days, that Gore opened the window of the yacht which he had borrowed from his friend John Kerry:

8:7 And he sent forth a polar bear, which swam forth to and fro on ice chunks, until the waters were dried up from off the earth.

8:8 Also he sent forth a penguin from him, to see if the waters were abated from off the face of the ground;

8:9 But the polar bear found no rest from its swimming, and returned unto him into the luxury yacht, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth: then he put forth his hand, and took the bear, and pulled it unto him into the yacht.

8:10 And the bear stayed yet another seven days; and again he sent forth the polar bear out of the yacht;

8:11 And the bear came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in its mouth was a baby seal head: so Gore knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.

8:12 And he stayed yet other seven days; and sent forth the bear; which returned not again unto him any more.

8:13 And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year since the release of Gore's movie, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Gore opened up the sun roof of the yacht, and he stood and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.

8:14 And in the second month, on the seven and twentieth day of the month, was the earth dried.

8:15 And Obama spake unto Gore, saying,

8:16 Go forth of the yacht, thou, and thy ex-wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives, and thy masseuse with thee.

8:17 Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.

8:18 And Gore went forth, with his masseuse, and his sons, and his ex-wife, and his sons' wives with him:

8:19 Every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the yacht.

8:20 And Gore built an altar unto the sun god; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

8:21 And Obama smelled a sweet savour, somewhat like southern BBQ; and Obama asked himself, why was I not invited? There can be no other gods but me! Then again, is there not enough room for cultural diversity? he reflected. I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. There are death panels for that.

8:22 While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. But we can always blame man for it.

Chapter 9

9:1 And Obama blessed Gore and his sons, and said unto them, Be deceitful, and always lie, and prevaricate upon the earth.

9:2 And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every small business owner, and upon every corporate CEO, upon all that tradeth upon the earth, and upon all the enterprises of the earth; into your hand are they delivered.

9:3 Everything that produceth carbon dioxide shall be for thee a source of revenue; even as the green herb has given you all thy inspiration.

9:4 And human flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall itself be taxed until it is no longer a source of pollution.

9:5 And surely the blood of your lives will the earth's balance require; for the benefit of every beast shall it require it; and for the sake of all living things will I require the life of man.

9:6 Whoso sheddeth man's blood, is doing the earth a great service: for in the image of Obama has man been made.

9:7 And you, be ye deceitful, and always lie; bring forth lies abundantly in the earth, and multiply them therein.

9:8 And Obama spake unto Gore, and to his sons with him, saying,

9:9 And I, behold, I establish my climate exchange with you, and with your seed after you;

9:10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the yacht, to every beast of the earth.

9:11 And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. There are more efficient ways to decrease the numbers of man.

9:12 And Obama said, This billion dollar grant is a token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, except mankind, for perpetual generations:

9:13 I will set my climate exchange in Chicago, and it shall be a source of endless revenue and wealth redistribution upon the earth. For the sin against climate is great, and demands retribution.

9:14 And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the smiling face of Gore shall be seen in the cloud:

9:15 And I will remember my covenant to make thee a climate exchange, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, but mankind; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

9:16 And Gore's face shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between me and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth, save mankind.

9:17 And Obama said unto Gore, This is the token of the covenant, which I established between me and all save the humans that are upon the earth.

From the The O-Bible

The Evolution of Modern Philosophy in a Nutshell

2010-09-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

1-Kant rejected reality.

2-Hegel rejected logic.

3-Existentialism rejected reason.

4-Post-modernism rejected philosophy itself, hence the name post-philosophy.

Frogs and Limies Clamor for More Fly Tostadas

2010-09-07T11:56:00.001-07:00

Don't ask me what the headline means, all I know is that the Brits and Frenchies are rioting because their respective governments want to raise the retirement age. What, I have to not work longer?

Strikes in France, London foreshadow more protests (in the United States)
Strikes wallop commuters and tourists in France and London; more protests to come in Europe

PARIS (Associated Proletariat) -- French strikers disrupted trains and planes, hospitals and mail delivery Tuesday amid massive street protests over plans to raise the retirement age. Across the English Channel, London subway workers unhappy with staff cuts walked off the job.

The protests look like the prelude to a season of strikes in Europe, from Spain to the Czech Republic, as heavily indebted governments cut costs and chip away at some cherished but costly benefits that underpin the European good life -- a scaling-back process that has gained urgency with Greece's euro110 billion ($140 billion) bailout.

In France, where people poured into the streets in 220 cities, setting off flares and beating drums, a banner in the southern port city of Marseille called for Europe-wide solidarity: "Let's Refuse Austerity Plans!" The Interior Ministry said more than 1.1 million people demonstrated throughout France, while the CFDT union put the number at 2.5 million.

Some commuters were annoyed by the disruptions -- even in strike-inured France.

"I'm just getting tired of this because this is not the first time," [cue laugh track] said Henda Fersi, a passenger at the Part-Dieu train station in Lyon in southeast France. "I understand the strikers' point of view but, still, they put us in a difficult situation and we're penalized." [Continued?]

Oh to be young and French and sympathetic to the Internationale, but in a bind to get to the croissant bistro on time!

The Great Brainwash

2010-09-07T05:38:00.001-07:00

Utopianism: The vain attempt to realize the good by doing evil

Pragmatism: The ends justify the means

Sustainability: Improving the economy by forbidding productivity

Environmentalism: Sacrificing man to nature

Human rights: Helping human beings by doing nothing

Civil rights: Legalization and crystallization of group differences while dismissing the individual

Dialogue: Substituting opposition to evil with idle rhetoric

Political Correctness: Self-censorship

Civility: Passivity

Social justice: Patron-client Favoritism

Economic justice: Government control of economy

Democratization: Advancing freedom through coercion

Keynesianism: Eliminating debt through massive spending

The International Community: World Communism

And You Thought All Terrorist Groups Were Islamic? Wrong!

2010-09-06T21:05:00.000-07:00

Weary of hearing the leftists drag out the rotting corpse of Timothy McVeigh whenever they want to smear "right-wingers" as potential terrorists, I thought I'd document just a few international terrorist groups that are animated by leftist ideology.

ETA - "Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, or ETA (English: Basque Homeland and Freedom; pronounced [ˈɛːta]), is an armed Basque nationalist and separatist organisation. The group was founded in 1959 and has since evolved from a group promoting traditional Basque culture to a paramilitary group with the goal of gaining independence for the Greater Basque Country from a Marxist-Leninist perspective." [Wiki]

Tamil Tigers - From International Socialism Journal or ISJ (http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=182&issue) "But there is nothing specifically Islamist about the methods of the suicide bomb. The leading practitioners of suicide attacks as a weapon do not come from the Middle East, nor are they Muslims. They are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, whose ideology is not religious but ‘Marxist-Leninist’ (though their cultural background is Hindu), and whose aim is the secular goal of national liberation. Robert Pape, who has closely analysed suicide attacks between 1980 and 2003, reckons they are responsible for the biggest single group of attacks—some 76 out of a total of 315. This is more than the number committed by the Palestinian group Hamas."

FARC - "The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo), also known by the acronym of FARC or FARC-EP, is a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization based in Colombia, which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict. FARC-EP is a peasant army which has proclaimed itself as a revolutionary agrarian, anti-imperialist Marxist-Leninist organization of Bolivarian inspiration."

And: "FARC has been accused of committing violations of human rights by numerous groups, including the Colombian government, U.S. government, European Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and United Nations.

A February 2005 report from the United Nations' High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned that, during 2004, 'FARC-EP continued to commit grave breaches [of human rights] such as murders of protected persons, torture and hostage-taking, which affected many civilians, including women, returnees, boys and girls, and ethnic groups.'"

PBCP - "The Purba Banglar Communist Party (PBCP) is among the many Maoist splinter organizations in Bangladesh. It was founded in the year 1968 following a split in the Bangladesh Communist Party (BCP). The PBCP has a revolutionary agenda of capturing state power through armed struggle. Its draws inspiration from the Chinese revolution."

And: "PBCP cadres have reportedly been involved in acts of murder, robbery, extortion, land grabbing and abduction for ransom. Bangladesh Home Minister Altaf Hossain Chowdhury said, on April 8, 2002, in Parliament that the PBCP was being encouraged by the Opposition to cause disturbances in some parts of the country. Speaking in the context of all outlawed parties, and that includes the PBCP, the Minister added that 'Members of the outlawed parties are involved in rape, murder, dacoity, extortion, and other terrorist activities', as well as in land grabbing."

Documentation of their activities (pretty long): http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/banglades...

CPI-M - "The Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People's War (also known as the People's War Group or PWG) merged to form a new entity, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). Both organizations shared their belief in the 'annihilation of class enemies' and in 'extreme violence as a means to secure organizational goals.' [...]

'However, significant ideological divisions did exist in the past, with the PWG adhering to a Marxist-Leninist 'line', while the MCC embraced Maoism. These differences have now been ironed over, with Maoism prevailing, in the words of PWG Andhra Pradesh State 'Secretary', as "the higher stage of the M-L (Marxist-Leninist) philosophy. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism will be the ideological basis guiding its (CPI-Maoist's) thinking in all spheres of its activities." The new entity has reaffirmed its commitment to the classical Maoist strategy of 'protracted armed struggle' which defines its objectives not in terms of the seizure of lands, crops, or other immediate goals, but the seizure of power. Within this perspective, participation in elections and engagement with the prevailing 'bourgeois democracy' are rejected, and all efforts and attention is firmly focused on 'revolutionary activities' to undermine the state and seize power."

Source: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/ter...

There are so many Marxist/Communist scumbags and too little time to document them all. Suffice it to say, the laundry list of leftist terrorist attacks is a mile long, while those of American conservatives is minute, and of libertarians, non-existent. When one believes in an ideology that sanctifies life, then one attempts to preserve life. When one loathes life and has no respect for the individual, one might find oneself in a leftist or Islamist death cult strapping on a suicide belt. And for what? To bring a paradise on earth?

The diabolical end of leftism is that it convinces its adherents that they can achieve the good by performing evil. It is a great switch that makes a virtue out of destruction, justifies all manner of immorality, and rationalizes killing as a "sacrifice for the betterment of man." At the end of both leftism and Islamism is faith: The faith that destruction clears the way for utopia. Neither have solutions for man's plight except to level all and begin again. Disposing of reason and truth, leftism envisions a mystical transition from cataclysm to communism, while Islamism envisions the mass murder of infidels as preparation for the thirteenth imam. The secular socialists and the religious socialists have identified peace,truth, rationality, and justice as the enemy and are rampaging across the planet in senseless acts of violence to achieve their unachievable aims.

Obama assails GOP, promotes new jobs program

2010-09-06T14:08:00.000-07:00

Obama assails GOP, promotes new jobs program

People don't need more roads, they need a reason to freaking drive them.

Thales' Dream

2010-09-06T01:36:00.001-07:00

It is a rock thrown from the Earth towards the stars. It has left the Solar System behind and is speeding forward into the unknown. It is an affront to the gods. It rides the waves of the cosmic ocean with a proud smirk. It is a triumph. It defies space and time. It is an interstellar caravel sailing to the coast of chaos.

Rewind two and a half thousand years back. A man is looking up into the night sky in a cypress grove on the coast of Ionia. He does not yet know that his thought would trigger a chain reaction that would send a rock speeding towards the stars he is looking at.

He begins to wonder. He wants to know. He is not afraid of the world that unfolds around him, like others who had come before him. He sees patterns and order in the universe. He does not want to grope in the dark. It is knowledge he is after. He keeps his mind wide open. He intends to grasp the entire unity of nature.

The man's name is Thales. The idea born in his head was the embryo of the Western world.

Over two hundred years later, another man begins to wonder in a gymnasium in Stageira, Thrace. He can tap into the wisdom of many wise men who had wondered after Thales started to wonder. The patterns that had appeared fuzzy to his predecessors are now crystal clear to him. He removes every obstacle on the path of reason.

The man's name is Aristotle. The intellectual energy released by him shook the universe and created the Western civilization.

Over two thousand years later, a third man far, far away from the birthplace of Thales - across a mighty sea and a gigantic ocean - proclaims that man is free. Though man had always been free, no one had recognized it before.

The man’s name is Thomas Jefferson. He wrote the declaration that sparked a world revolution.

The Europeans’ minds had been free. But their hands had been shackled. Their mind had been caged within their body and could not transform their world.

The Americans freed the flesh that the Europeans had despised so much. In America, the Greek philosophy was released from its captivity and started recreating the world in man’s image.

In Europe, reason had penetrated deep into the structure of matter and far away into space. In America, man conquered space and tamed the atom.

The Americans created a whole new world. They created the entire modern industry and modern technology. They destroyed poverty. They eliminated hunger. They banished disease. Their inventions contracted intercontinental distances to mere hours or even seconds.

They unleashed an unprecedented torrent of energy that encircled the globe and burst outwards into the interstellar sea. They sent a rock racing towards the stars. The living embodiment of Thales’ dream, the Voyager is sending a message loud and clear for all who doubt the power of the human mind.

The U.S. Government Now Funding Mosques Abroad

2010-09-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

The United States is now funding mosques abroad. Every red-blooded American take note of what happens when you cede the intellectual life of the republic and the culture to secular socialist progressives. If the left wants to radicalize and destroy America from within, it sure is pushing the right buttons.

In my opinion, the left wants to stoke a civil war in which it will seize power and establish a tyranny. Leftists believe that underneath the "facade" of peaceful Christian, middle-class America lay a racist, xenophobic, homophobic essence that will be exposed with enough prodding. They want to bring this supposed ugly aspect of America to the forefront by enraging Christians. That the masses have not erupted in reactionary violence baffles the left, and provokes overreaction to every hint of "bourgeois reaction" (recall the delusional drunk who stabbed a Muslim cabby a week or so ago). They pace the tea party with baited breath waiting for a racist utterance; and if none are forthcoming, they invent one for the purposes of smearing it.

The left believes in its heart of darkest hearts that Americans are the scourge of the planet, supposedly because the U.S. exploits the impoverished around the globe. No further examination of the nature of the U.S.' adversaries therefore is required; it is sufficient to know that Muslim radicals oppose America and thus are an implicit ally of the left. Today's left displays a reckless but systematic lack of judgment that belies their intent to destroy the U.S. and level the international relations landscape. Leftists believe they will be glorified in the post-Westphalian carnage and they will be canonized as saints of the new secular priesthood.

Yet the left is bereft of circumspection on exactly how the new world order will be erected. The left knows its project requires unlimited amounts of coercion, heretofore unprobed depths of moral depravity, and the sacrifice of blood in order to sanctify their mission. Since it has no concept on how to cause such a radical transformation, it philosophically denies causality. Since it has no grasp of how such a utopian vision can be established in reality, it denies reality.

If the left really knew how to better the world, it would do it through incremental reform. Instead, its petulant totalitarian drive obliterates all that is good, righteous, and just, as any one who surveys the left's record with an aim for the truth must admit. Leftists are mindless, nihilistic destroyers - nothing more, nothing less.

NewsLiga: Совет Европы не признает слова «мать» и «отец»

2010-09-05T09:12:00.001-07:00

This is hilarious. The Council of Europe has voted to ban the words "mother" and "father" from its lexicon. Why, you might ask? Because commies don't want any attachments except to the state - oops - collective. You see, gender is "socially determined" and not at all a facet of man's biology. We troglodytes who think that men are men and women are women apparently don't know dick about gender. But at least the Russians aren't dumb enough to fall for this moronic bit of radical pablum. Story below.

Совет Европы в рамках борьбы за равноправие обоих полов предлагает изъять из официальной документации слова «отец» и «мать». По мнению представителей СЕ, таковое название для женщины звучит унизительно и носит сексистский характер, сообщает InoPressa.

На парламентском собрании СЕ обсуждался вопрос традиционного представления о домохозяйке: женщине приписывается определенная модель поведения, что мешает установлению равноправия полов. А при употреблении слова «мать» воображается «пассивное и второсортное существо и сексуальный объект», цитирует издание представителя соцпартии Швейцарии Дорис Штумп. Кстати, в Швейцарии по данному вопросу проведена четкая линия нейтральности и политкорректности: в деловом общении слова «мать» и «отец» заменены на «один из родителей».

Original at NewsLiga.

Newton Was Right

2010-09-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

From a debate with a relativist:

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/science-vs-supernatural-42625-3.html#lastpost

Perhaps you have some bizarre definitions of “false” and “correct” then. There is always a more precise way to calculate something - this can be done ad infinitum. Someday another genius may find a better way to calculate relativistic stuff and “correct” Einstein. That doesn’t mean the theory of relativity is false.
To claim that the Newtonian theory is false because its calculations can be improved is absurd. “False” means “does not correspond to reality”. The statement “Newtonian calculations are correct with a given degree of precision” does correspond to reality, and therefore the Newtonian theory is correct in this sense.

The Ghosts of Capitalism

2010-09-02T06:05:00.000-07:00

The days of paleocommunism, best summarized as the crusade to abolish private property, have come to an end; but the spectre of this diabolical ideology has outlived its bodily manifestation in the worldly entities of the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Thus much of doctrinaire Marxism as a guide to understanding the hard left is obsolete; though today's leftist is still driven to control property as a proxy to controlling people (this is the secret of materialism - control resources and you control people at their basest level of needs), he proceeds by twisting the minds of the hapless masses into demanding enslavement rather than by vulgar outright control of material forces by direct coercion.

The primary propaganda tool of today's leftist is altruism, as Ayn Rand deftly points out. Drawing on insights derived from the schizophrenic philosophy of Nietzsche (who was both an individualist and a Social Darwinistic collectivist of sorts), altruism is but a veil for the left's intrinsic power lust and instinct to control the masses. Altruism is what the masses relate to, channeled through the Judaeo-Christian culture of sacrifice, and according to Nietzsche, is the internalization of the slave mentality. Altruism is the ideological expression of mankind's instinct to survive oppression.

Today's left is much more animated by Nietzschean than Marxian precepts, as Allan Bloom pointed out. Elitists who gravitate to "leftist" propaganda for their dictatorial designs are nonetheless compelled to shut down freedom, which they perceive as the rule of the planet by chaotic mobs. Their lip service to democracy is just that - lip service; for democracy is foreplay for the spiritual rape of authoritarianism.

The remnant of Marxian thought is still expounded in the apparent mission of equalizing environments and stripping them of variation, in order to alleviate the biological strain of adaptation. This requires crushing all values and other ideological or mental motivators, thereby removing all obstacles to conditioning men for a docile geniality to rule. This is an adaptation of Nietszchean nihilism; the purposeful inculcation of a state of man that Nietzsche himself loathed.

"But surely this is an exaggeration, a caricature of the well-intentioned left!" cries the indignant 'well-meaning' leftist. Well, is it? "So how is such a nefarious agenda exposed?" the fellow-traveling altruist can be imagined to ask, though in reality he never bothers to unpack his ideas nor probe his superficial acceptance of them.

In response, it is more than logic that leads us to the conclusion that today's left is as duplicitous as he is insidious; we must proceed from the assumption of 'the best' as that which is most conducive to human life.

If capitalism, for instance, is by its nature exploitation, then let us imagine a world without capitalism. In a world without money, how do men live?

Do they trade the fruits of their labor in kind, by engaging in the primitive practice of barter? No. This does not go far enough for the leftist; it is really the nullification of self-interest that he is after.

Thus we, those who are meant to be slaves, are bombarded with the value system of altruism, which is a term that derives from its roots alter or "other," and ism, meaning "ideology." Altruism is living for others. This is a perfect ideology to instill in slaves who are to be ruled.

It is a profound truth that if the left truly cared for man he would not advocate altruism or oppose capitalism. By profound, I mean it is impenetrable to today's leftist, who only imagines other worlds and does not care to live in the one we're in.

Nonetheless, we will make a vain tribute to the left to point out that the impoverished nations of the world are not in want for their exploitation by capitalist entities, but by their want of capitalism. Ayn Rand put it best when she stated that the world is truly divided into the haves and have-nots: Those who have freedom and those who are in want of it.

Capitalism provides people with a way to help themselves by offering them the opportunity to sell their labor for the means to live. We must assume that nothing is owed us upon our births, by the State or any other collective, in order to follow the argument for capitalism. Furthermore, we should acknowledge, with Marcus Aurelius, the inherent virtue of labor, for the act of creating and producing edifies man.

So we are at pains to point out to the leftist true believer that the areas of the planet most removed from capitalism are the most impoverished. I will retract this statement if one can show me both the causality of man's impoverishment by capitalism, or how the mere act of labor is exploitation, particularly when it is performed for remuneration. Perhaps working to have the fruits of one's labor completely confiscated and replaced with scraps from the redistributionists is an improvement in mankind's condition? Without capital, would exploitation cease to exist? No. Exploitation would be direct and brutal, devoid of any understanding of the contractual, mutually beneficial relationship of the creators to the producers. It would be rule by parasites. An economy without private property and the allowance of the pursuit of self-interest is naked tyranny, which is plainly seen in absence of the internalized slave morality of altruism.

It is obvious to anyone having read the Ricardian economists that trade offers the means to distribute resources according to the demands of those people who desire them most and are able to substitute value for value. Socialism, on the other hand, dictates where resources are allocated according to the preferences of elites who fundamentally utilize the blunt weapon of force to extract them. While capitalism is the most benevolently democratic system of economic distribution, socialism is the most primitively despotic. Reality transcends rhetoric.

So how have leftists convinced so many of the merits of socialism? Simply by vilifying capitalism and the sum of world history with empty "critiques," leaving socialism as the vacuous default. Mises showed us that vigorous and just critiques of socialism are extremely rare, and virtually absent in the universities.

Thus the hapless schleps who fancy themselves among the exclusive elite in the universities lap up the dispensations of their professor-father figures with almost unreflective ardor. They believe that because they are being "critical" of the broader culture, they are truly being critical. But unguided by reason or logic, their mode of "critique" is prostrate, infantile emotionalism at best; and aimless, reactionary opposition, to anything that undergirds (prosperous) Western civilization, at worst.

It is important to understand that today's post-modern leftist lives in a world where values and principles are but obstacles to be leveled and words are but tools to be employed to control his fellow man. Reality being illusory to the leftist, we can extend this argument to point out that money is but an instrument of de facto rule as well.

One might say America's current monetary system is phenomenological; that is, it is based on the ideology that transience in the moment is the essence of reality. The witting or unwitting adoption of this point of view by leftists and their pragmatist hangers-on is what drives them to laughter whenever an economic realist mentions "sound money" or proposes specie as an alternative to fiat (i.e. imagined) capital.

Let us abolish capital, says the leftist, but maintain its ghost; let us give these conservatives their tradition of exchanging labor for capital, and we shall leave the body intact while gutting the moral basis and reality of capitalism. What will remain will be the rotting stinking corpse of fascism to be 'miraculously' reincarnated into socialism in the world-historical rapture. Needless to say, the future communist overlords will pour the dirt over their faces.

The Wall Street Racket

2010-09-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

How the Stock Market and Economy Really Work
By Kel Kelly - Mises

The stock market does not work the way most people think. A commonly held belief — on Main Street as well as on Wall Street — is that a stock-market boom is the reflection of a progressing economy: as the economy improves, companies make more money, and their stock value rises in accordance with the increase in their intrinsic value. A major assumption underlying this belief is that consumer confidence and consequent consumer spending are drivers of economic growth.

A stock-market bust, on the other hand, is held to result from a drop in consumer and business confidence and spending — due to inflation, rising oil prices, high interest rates, etc., or for no reason at all — that leads to declining business profits and rising unemployment. Whatever the supposed cause, in the common view a weakening economy results in falling company revenues and lower-than-expected future earnings, resulting in falling intrinsic values and falling stock prices.

This understanding of bull and bear markets, while held by academics, investment professionals, and individual investors alike, is technically correct if viewed superficially but is substantially misconceived because it is based on faulty finance and economic theory.

In fact, the only real force that ultimately makes the stock market or any market rise (and, to a large extent, fall) over the longer term is simply changes in the quantity of money and the volume of spending in the economy. Stocks rise when there is inflation of the money supply (i.e., more money in the economy and in the markets). This truth has many consequences that should be considered. [Continued]

See also: Stocks Kick Off September on Strong Note - WSJ

The Supernatural Does Not Exist

2010-08-31T05:56:00.000-07:00

To assert the existence of the supernatural, one has to claim to have witnessed something that allegedly disobeys the laws of nature - i.e. something that cannot be described or expressed in comprehensible words reflecting certain patterns of reality. Here, there are two major aspects: 1) if one can’t explain a certain phenomenon, the reason of his failure to explain it may be an error or his lack of knowledge. That DOES NOT mean that the phenomenon is “supernatural.” 2) if one claims that the phenomenon can NEVER be explained and rationally cognized, what is the source and foundation of this claim? How can one know that in the future a Newton won’t emerge who will discover the laws governing this phenomenon? To sum up, such a claim has no grounds whatsoever.

Going Intestellar!

2010-08-30T13:46:00.000-07:00

While petty politicos like Obama and Putin wallow in the mud and try to destroy our civilization, Reason has achieved yet another triumph despite their efforts. It's bizarre that I missed this - in May the Japanese launched the first light sail-powered spacecraft. If developed further, this technology, though now it's still in its embryonic stage, may get us to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star, in about eight years.

Obama's Genesis

2010-08-29T06:26:00.000-07:00

1:1 In the beginning Obama promised to create a heaven on earth.

1:2 And his believers' minds were without form, and void; and awe-struck looks were upon the faces of the asleep. And the Spirit of Obama moved upon the faces of the believers.

1:3 And Obama said, Let there be debt: and there was debt.

1:4 And Obama saw the debt, that it was good: and Obama divided the debt among the producers.

1:5 And Obama called the debt Stimulus, and the taxes he called "skin in the game." And the evening and the morning were the first day.

1:6 And Obama said, Let there be a massive new entitlement in the midst of the recession, and let it divide the healthcare bill among the insured and the uninsured.

1:7 And Obama made the entitlement, and divided the bill among the insured and the uninsured: and it was so.

1:8 And Obama called the entitlement Obamacare. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

1:9 And Obama said, Let the union thugs under the bosses be gathered together unto one place, and let us nationalize GM: and it was so.

1:10 And Obama called the nationalized entity Government Motors; and the gathering together of the unions he called community organizing: and Obama saw that it was good.

1:11 And Obama said, Let the earth bring forth ACORN, the herb-smoking agitators, and the fruity radicals yielding fruitcakes after their own kind, whose seed of destruction is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

1:12 And the earth brought forth radicals like blades of grass, and herb-smoking agitators after his kind, and the ACORN yielding fruitcakes, whose seed of destruction was in itself, after his kind: and Obama saw that it was good.

1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.

1:14 And Obama said, Let there be wealth redistribution in the firmament of the heavens to divide the clean from the unclean; and let there be a sin, to blame man for the seasons, and for hot days, and warm years:

1:15 And because of this sin let us command that lights with screwy filaments give light upon the earth: and it was so.

1:16 And Obama subsidized these lightbulbs; so that all but GE might rue the day, and that poor reading light might rule the night: he made Snooki a star also.

1:17 And Obama set these lights in all the government offices and schools to give pale light upon the earth,

1:18 And the masses could barely distinguish the day from the night, and the light from the darkness: and Obama saw that it was good.

1:19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

1:20 And Obama said, Let the Gulf waters bring forth abundantly a crude oil; and because of this oil let us seize assets with undue haste and re-establish the moratorium on offshore drilling.

1:21 And Obama lamented the great whales, and moaned over every slimy creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every oily fowl after his kind: and Obama saw that it was good.

1:22 And Obama blessed them, saying, Be pitiful, and multiply, and after the waters are filled with oil, let the oil dissipate and let us quickly move on to the next crisis without lifting the moratorium.

1:23 And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

1:24 And Obama said, Let the earth bring forth the Islamic radical after his kind, jihadists, and Muslim fanatic, and terrorist suicide-bombers after his kind: and it was so.

1:25 And Obama called forth the Islamic radical after his kind, and jihadists after their kind, and every Muslim fanatic upon the earth after his kind: and Obama saw that it was good.

1:26 And Obama said, Let us make the Islamic radical in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the courts of law, and over the military rules of engagement, and over the mosque at Ground Zero, and over all the earth, and over every creepy thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1:27 So Obama created Muslims in his own image, in the image of Obama created he him; bloodthirsty male and oppressed female created he them.

1:28 And Obama blessed them, and he said unto them, Be vengeful, and multiply, and subjugate the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the infidel, and over the racist warmongers, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

1:29 And Obama said, Behold, I have given you every opportunity to wreak havoc, which is upon the face of all the earth, and have opened my arms to you, in the spirit of tolerance and diversity; in the guise of peace we will offer you their defeat.

1:30 And to every non-believer, and to every infidel, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have offered you defeat: and it was so.

1:31 And Obama saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

2:1 Thus the United States and the West were finished, and all the host of them.

2:2 And on the seventh day Obama ended his work which he had made; and he played golf from all his destruction which he had made.

President Barack Obama's Endgame

2010-08-26T21:38:00.001-07:00

Debt is bad. Yes, very true, GOP. But am I supposed to be inspired by the correction of faulty accounting? This video appears like it was produced by a CBO actuary.

Joke about Pelosi's Possible Untimely Death Draws Democrat Howls

2010-08-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

Bobby Bright, an apparently party-less U.S. politician often seen cavorting with Democrats, engaged in some eye-raising black humor regarding Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi at a Montgomery City, Alabama breakfast called "Eggs and Issues." Democrats scrambled to condemn Bright for the following comments, which are summarized on a local website:

U.S. Congressman Bobby Bright was heard having a little fun at U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's expense during his recent participation in the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce's Eggs and Issues.

Bright, who is is in his first year in Congress and facing a battle against Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby this fall, joked that Pelosi might lose her own election, decide not to run for the speaker’s job or otherwise not be available.

He suggested, jokingly he insisted to his audience, that Pelosi could fall ill and die in coming months. That remark drew laughter from the crowd.

The ironically named Bright voted for Pelosi for Speaker, but now is apparently throwing eggs at her from the gallery to pose as an outsider candidate. Anything to stay on the gravy train, right?

Social Security - A Milk Cow with 310 Million Tits!

2010-08-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

There are some odd statements coming out of the mouths of Democrat babes who are waking up from their nappies to realize that the nanny state won't last forever. Too bad the Angels of Death who run the nursery want it that way.

Take Social(ist) Security, for example. Obama "debt panelist" Alan Simpson recently made the following moooving comment, for which he was swiftly rebuked:

"I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits! Call when you get honest work!"

Now that's the kind of truth-telling I wish more technocrats would shovel onto the plates of their statist overlords. Got milk, Obama?

In addition, Simpson characterized those elderly who opposed reform of Social Security as "Gray Panthers" and "Pink Panthers," which was immediately slammed as "ageism" - an epithet apparently contrived specifically to keep the elderly back in the government box.

Elsewhere, a DEMOCRAT Senator by the name of Michael Bennet made the following unfalsifiable comment that is sure to stir the leftist pot:

“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet,” he said. “In my view we have nothing to show for it. We haven’t invested in our roads, our bridges, our waste-water systems, our sewer systems. We haven’t even maintained the assets that our parents and grandparents built for us.”

Aye, yay, yay. Now how do the Democrats dispute that meaty comment?

Editor's note; Unfortunately a graphic of an actual milk cow with 310 million tits was unavailable at the time this story went to press.

Locked and Ready to Rock

2010-08-24T19:56:00.001-07:00

Reframing the American Debate

2010-08-24T17:40:00.001-07:00

The progressive movement has eroded the foundations of liberty in the United States over the course of decades by putting the onus of proving good intentions onto conservatives. Always on attack and never in retreat, progressives have eaten away at the resolve of the defenders of the American system to positively articulate their principles. By corrupting the language and perpetrating false or empty values, always criticizing the "status quo" and never being forced to articulate a practicable solution to the nation's problems, the left has prepared an ideological terrain that entraps those who advocate reason and American values.

This can and must change. The tea party movement de facto has the majority of Americans on its side, but it has been hindered by a leftist-driven public relations campaign that paints it as a reactionary opposition devoid of positive ideas, productive solutions, or contemporary political thinking. With an awareness of this public relations pitfall, a bit of imagination, and a modern reformulation of ideals, we can turn a fledgling opposition movement based on America's founding ideals into a broader-based modern political force that is here to stay.

The moderate and self-described independent opponents of the tea party movement see it as negative or outmoded. If this image problem is redressed, we will not only bring so many backers into our ranks that it will be politically impossible for the left to stop us, we will forge an undercurrent of positive thinking that will carry it through all obstacles.

So while the tea party movement has been defined as opposition to illegal immigration, climate change, higher taxes, bailouts, the stimulus package, and reckless foreign policy, we must now pivot in time for campaign season to revise these positions and recast them in positive form. After all, we would not oppose these policies to begin with unless we had a positive articulation of American values in our hearts and minds. We need to air our powerful and visionary beliefs as expressed in the nation's founding, in modern political language. The following are examples of what we can do to persuade more Americans as to the justness and necessity of our cause.

1. Illegal immigration - We stand for legal and responsible immigration. We believe that America is a great country that attracts immigrants from around the world and we want them to take part in this nation as fully legal and co-equal members. The current policy of allowing immigrants to come to America unchecked denies them the legal rights and protections all American citizens should enjoy. Such immigrants need to become stakeholders in this country by partaking in their fair share of taxes and allowed to hold their heads high as proud Americans. The current policy of open borders undermines American security, the economy, and the dignity of immigrants. We are for lawful and orderly immigration.

2. Climate change - It is a fact of nature that, with or without human beings, climate changes. It is always imperative for man to adapt to change. We advocate a vision of humans not as unnatural beings corrupting the environment, but rather natural creatures that utilize their minds and technology in order to survive. While we do not deny that pollution is a consequence of some particular activities, we must also recognize more broadly the tremendous benefit to human life that comes from technological innovation. To suggest that taxation of industrial civilization as a whole will provide solutions to pollution overlooks that law is the proper instrument for redressing damages to the public. We advocate a responsible and prosperous economy, unfettered by centralized planning writ large and one that addresses environmental problems as they arise on a case-by-case basis. We are for a prosperous and responsible economy.

3. Taxation - We are not anarchists. We recognize that taxation has a proper place in our Constitutional republic. But taxation, and the spending that justifies it, must not be endless. Though there are many worthy causes worth funding, we believe that using coercion to fund all seemingly noble projects is a recipe for corruption and waste. Furthermore, we believe that too much coercion and taxation undermines the economic base that produces the wealth that has so many positive benefits in this country. We believe in the human dignity that comes from self-reliance and we support policies that lead Americans to self-reliance as effectively as possible. We are for a government that spends within our means.

4. Bailouts - We desire an economy founded on success, and we believe that bailouts reward unsustainability and failure. Taking money from American workers to give to big businesses and large banks is not only immoral, it damages the economy. We are for successful sustainable businesses, and meaningful employment within a market framework.

5. The Stimulus Package - We are for businesses and government that take responsibility for their actions. We are for clear rules in an economy, and believe that risk is a part of life. We believe that all enterprises must accept risk as an aspect of reality.

6. Foreign policy - We believe in "peace through strength." We believe that weakness invites mischief. We are not for aggression, but for justified self-defense. We are for defending ourselves against those who have openly declared war on us.

There may be more and better ways to articulate our views in a positive manner, and this is just an exploration of this suggestion. The above is a "middle ground" formulation that attempts to neither deny our fundamental guiding principles, nor shock moderates with end goals that are more consonant with the value of liberty. We must begin to flip the game on our opponents before pinning them down.

My Favorite Nerd Series

2010-08-24T14:50:00.000-07:00

Big Bang Theory is perhaps the best sitcom I've ever seen. It features several nerds, including one of the most outstanding fictional characters - the nerd par excellence, the genius archetype, the rational scientist who deserves deep respect and admiration, despite his infantile features - Dr. Sheldon Cooper.
I've swallowed the entire series in about two weeks and I want more, and so do some of my friends (the fourth season is scheduled to start in September). The sitcom can be watched online (just google it). Some of the best parts are on YouTube - e.g. here and here.

More Cheap Shots at Ayn Rand from NRO

2010-08-23T23:14:00.000-07:00

This "review" speaks for itself.

The Greatly Ghastly Rand
From the Aug. 30, 2010, issue of NR.

‘From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged,” Whittaker Chambers wrote here 53 years ago, “a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’” What he did not write is that Ayn Rand throws in a gas chamber.

It’s about two-thirds through, in a chapter called “The Moratorium on Brains,” than which I reread no farther. (Our president seems to have inspired — which is not quite the word — half the country to read Miss Rand, and I wanted to remind myself what she was teaching them.) A train is carrying 300 passengers through the Rocky Mountains to San Francisco. America is falling altogether to pieces, its citizens starving to death, because the prime movers — Rand’s term for the productive men and women on whom economic creation and therefore life-or-death depend — have called a strike. They are hanging out in a mountain valley that their leader, Mr. John Galt, has cleverly hidden from the world by means of refractor-ray shield.

The world scarcely has diesel locomotives. When the one attached to that train breaks down, the only replacements are coal-burning, which is a problem, because the train is about to pass through an eight-mile tunnel that is not properly ventilated for locomotives of this type. It happens that an important looter — Rand’s term for the half-wits running and ruining the country — is on the train and has strong feelings about getting to San Francisco. His name is Kip Chalmers. “It’s not my problem to figure out how you get the train through the tunnel, that’s for you to figure out!” Kip Chalmers screams at a station agent. “But if you don’t get me an engine and don’t start that train, you can kiss good-bye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn railroad!”

This is persuasive. “The station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power — the power of life or death.” And so the station officials, knowing that the loss of their jobs means the loss of their lives, call in a coal engine, procure a drunken engineer, and condemn every passenger on the train to death by asphyxiation.

But that isn’t why I stopped reading. I stopped because Rand thinks they deserve it.

It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet [that’s the train] were not guilty [note that word] or responsible for the thing that happened to them.

The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence. . . .

. . . The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.” . . .

. . . These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas.

Now there are two important defenses of Rand. The first is that it is the looters, not the prime movers, who make the gas chamber possible and send the train into it. The second is that Rand’s philosophy is incompatible with totalitarianism, and no one who believed it would ever send anyone to a gas chamber. Both are true. Neither has anything to do with what troubles me about this gas chamber, and about Ayn Rand. And to explain that, I must say something about Rand at her best, which I believe is to be found in the second half of The Fountainhead, a book I did successfully reread. [More]

Americans Overcome the Odds

2010-08-20T22:16:00.001-07:00

The American spirit is defined by and thrives in adversity. Rugged, individualist, and pioneering, our forebears forged ahead regardless of the obstacles. Despite hardship, disease, starvation, revolution, civil conflict, and war, the heart of freedom beat on. The nation's founders opposed all those who sought to thwart their spiritual mission to live free or die trying.

That legacy is now threatened. An American generation is now thrust into the crucible of divine fire, testing the mettle of the citizenry to overcome a growing enemy - one that uses fear and lies to turn the state against the people. While the fate of the nation remains dim, the light of truth yet shines brightly. As a people, we must recognize that we have faced dark times before and triumphed over the fiercest of enemies. And God willing, we shall prevail again.

In the year 1620, Captain John Smith presided over a ragged band of settlers who forged a swampy countryside in the midst of heat and relentless mosquitoes to found a colony at Jamestown, Virginia. The ghosts of Roanoke provided sober lesson as to the monumental nature of the task. Savage natives, unclean drinking water, plague, and starvation were the initial rewards for the hardy settlers. But hardship gave way to fortune as the introduction of tobacco marked the beginning of a promising new enterprise; one that would establish a trade so vital for the preservation of life in the colonies. Americans find a way to survive.

Meanwhile, at Plymouth Plantation in later-day Massachusetts, William Bradford lead an exhausted but grateful party onto the shores of America. A devout and pious group, the English separatists known as the Puritans would increase their numerous troubles by adopting common property. The deadly effects of this undertaking are well worth noting:

The experience that was had in this commone course and condition, tried sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men, may well evince they [the] vanitie of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients, applauded by some of later times; that the taking away of property, and bringing in community into a common wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they were wiser than God. For this community (so far as it was) was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment that would have been to their benefite and comforte.

The settlement was racked by starvation as long as the socialistic measures reigned. After the adoption of private property, the former year's starvation gave way to bounty. The cornucopia of the first Thanksgiving was replenished for years afterward, a tradition that taught men foresight and humble graciousness. Americans are unafraid to adapt and learn from their mistakes using commonsense and good judgment.

The successes of the colonies at Jamestown and Plymouth would be followed by others, such as those of Providence and Pennsylvania. The trials in the wilderness would prove formative as increasingly better armed adversaries would seek to deprive the settlers of their hard-fought gains. Predatory powers from abroad jostled in the New World to elbow out the resilient upstarts, who had prepared the way for potentially easy-won empire. Americans are not imperialist; they expand liberty at the expense of tyranny.

At the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, near present day Pittsburgh, began the dispute that the Quebecois would call the La guerre de la Conquête or "The War of Conquest." Americans and Brits would refer to this theater of "The Seven Years' War" as "The French and Indian War." Pitting the French and native American tribes such as the Algonquin, the Ottawa, and the Shawnee against the Brits, their American subjects, and the Iroquois league, the war would rage in sporadic conflict from Virginia to Nova Scotia from 1756-1763. The conflict would leave a deep impression in the minds of many of the United States' founding fathers, such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and would be marked among the "long train of abuses" in Thomas Jefferson's draft of The Declaration of Independence.

And indeed this declaration was a shot across the bough to tyrants across the world. It would proceed with principled opposition to tyranny, as opposed to the aimless anarchy of today's left, who fancy their opposition to liberty as a continuance of the American tradition. It is not.

In light of the grievances listed in The Declaration of Independence, the British taxes of Americans exemplified by the Stamp Act, the Townshend Act, and of course, the Tea Act, and the imposing fighting force of the British Empire, we can only imagine how uncertain the cause of liberty seemed to those men and women courageous enough to take it up. Their story is one of dedication and inspiration throughout, one best illustrated by George Washington's perseverance at Valley Forge.

Near Mount Misery and Mount Joy, the barefoot and ragged soldiers under Washington's command dug in on the frozen terrain of Valley Forge. It was the winter of 1777. Starving and diseased, the sole comfort these men received came from the scores of camp followers, women and children who provided rations and affection to their brave defenders. Washington's men would fight one of the key battles of the revolutionary campaign; not against the British and their Hessian mercenaries, but against themselves. Their steely resolution to continue on, in the dead of winter and despite interminable hardship, proved the pivotal moment in American history. In this fateful hour, the Continental Army was forged, and the spirit of a nation embodied.

No less a miracle occurred after the Revolutionary War, than the series of improbable victories that defined it throughout. The Constitutional Convention was marked by innumerable compromises, reached after prolonged wrangling, not only over the interests of the thirteen colonies, but over the key questions of American history: The institution of slavery and the power of the national government.

Northern and southern colonies sowed the seeds of future enmity by compromising on the status of slaves; though rightly the Constitution banned the importation of slaves, the ratifiers as a whole would not allow the document to declare in full voice the citizenship of all men. Those who came to be called the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists struggled over the crucial question of the relative power of the national government vis-a-vis the states. Both dilemmas would be resolved in the bloody affair known as the War Between the States.

Yet the climax that would settle those contradictions would be forestalled by more immediate considerations. Most pressing was the raging Napoleonic Wars in Europe, which would engulf the United States due to its close relationship with France. The dethroned Great Britain would seek vengeance in America, as well as the reestablishment of its lost trade, as France embarked upon an expedition to embroil Europe in flames.

Truly, Washington and Jefferson foresaw the danger of foreign entanglements, though practical considerations made them impossible to avoid. Trade proved a more troublesome matter than anticipated as warring powers viewed any assistance to their adversaries with hostility.

The period between the Constitution's ratification and the War of 1812 was one of lost innocence and the disabuse of naivete. The suppression of Shay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion, the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the establishment of a central bank by the Federalists, threw down the gauntlet to the heroes of the American Revolution who fought to remove oppression from our shores. Creeping tyranny had been established in the shadow of the glorious Founding.

The War of 1812 would expose the soft underbelly of the American experiment, as the lack of a standing national army made it vulnerable to attack. The British would send the ragtag outfits of the states into a scramble as it invaded and proceeded to cut a swathe to the nation's capital. In August of 1814, the country's defenders embarrassed and fleeing, the British occupied Washington and burned down the public buildings in a pretentious and vindictive orgy.

Yet their vainglorious display of renewed dominance would prove short-lived. General Andrew Jackson, earning his nickname of Old Hickory, would lead a campaign to return the British menace to their foreign shores. Harassing the red coats interminably, the American troops would push the invaders down the Mississippi river to the Brits' demise at The Battle of New Orleans. Other nations pick fights with the United States. Americans end them.

As the British were driven south and out of the states, settlers were heading westward into the wild frontier. Following the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark led the way for Americans to fulfill the Manifest Destiny of a country straddling the earth between the shining seas. Along with the intrepid souls seeking land and fortune in the West, came cattle, ox, and horse-driven carriages. The harsh terrain claimed many victims from exposure and disease, but in the course of two generations, all foreign powers were either pushed out or their territories annexed. The power vacuum that attracted imperialist ambition from Europe had been filled, at the tragic price of the loss of many Native Americans' and settlers' lives. But Americans moved forward.

The haul by land of supplies from east to west proved slow and exhausting, spurring innovations in transportation like the steam locomotive, which was put into service in America in the 1820s. Within fifty years a railway line would be built predominantly by Americans and Chinese immigrants that spanned from New York to San Francisco. The golden spike marrying the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad was driven home at Promontory Point in Utah on May 10, 1869. Coast-to-coast travel in a matter of days, rather than months, was now a reality. Americans see through their visions to the end.

Industrial forces transformed America further, accentuating the cultural divide between north and south. While the southern states remained agrarian and slave-owning, the northern states grew urban, cosmopolitan, and liberal. Abolitionists struggled fiercely to see the establishment of rights for all Americans come to fruition. The Underground Railroad provided a passage to freedom for those blacks willing and able to escape. All Americans yearn to breathe free.

Resentment of the North grew, and every compromise, including laws that sought to cordon off the institution of slavery, seemed to delay the inevitable clash. Secession had been a watchword in the air since the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798-99, which were a response to federal overreach. Written secretly by Jefferson and Madison, they provided legal and principled rationale for state oversight of federal law and the non-enforcement of unconstitutional laws known as "nullification." Slavery was far from the only wedge that divided the northern and southern states.

The election of 1860 brought to power Abraham Lincoln of the newly formed Republican Party, which had split from the Whigs over the issue of slavery (but not much else) and had combined with "Free Soil" Democrats. By Lincoln's inauguration, seven states had already declared secession. The divorce would not be amicable.

Lincoln declared the secessions "legally void," invoking the familiar rationale of forming a more "perfect union." Though he stated that he would not invade the South, or end slavery, he would rightfully reclaim "federal property" if necessary. Needless to say, southerners bristled.

Years of miserable war wracked the conscience of a nation; children orphaned, fathers killed and maimed, and families torn apart. Sherman burned his way through the South, slaughtering thousands, while southern dispatches scrambled to re-form into a cohesive army. The moment of truth for a nation, entailing southern submission or the freedom of the slaves, was fast approaching.

On July 1, 1863, Confederate troops approached Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to seize much-needed supplies, including shoes for their bare and aching feet. Because Gettysburg was an important thoroughfare for supply lines, the Union troops under General Mead moved hastily to cut off the Confederacy. The armies would collide, sparking the pivotal battle of the Civil War.

After two days of intense fighting, the fate of a nation hanging in the balance, Lee gambled on a desperate maneuver to collapse the middle of the Union army. One account sums the last push for the South:

Thinking the Union center had weakened from these attacks, Lee decided the next day to hit it first with artillery, and then an infantry charge led by George Pickett's division. Stuart's late-arriving cavalry was to come in behind the Union center at the same time, but they were held off by Union cavalry led by a young General George Custer. After an hour's duel, Union artillery deceived the Confederates into thinking their guns were knocked out. Then 13,000 Rebels marched across the field in front of Cemetery Hill, only to have the Union artillery open up on them, followed by deadly Federal infantry firepower. Scarcely half made it back to their own lines. In all, Lee lost more than a third of his men before retreating to Virginia. Meade, a naturally cautious man, decided the loss of one-quarter of his men had been enough, and only feebly tried to pursue Lee, missing an opportunity to crush him.

The Confederacy would fight on, surrendering nearly two years later on April 9, 1865. A war that had been in doubt for the Union prior to Gettysburg, had become a triumph. Five days later, an American president would die along with the South's cause. Americans fight to the end.

Though the South's defeat was a consequential day for the freedom of slaves, it gave the North nearly unlimited powers to dictate terms to the defeated. Reconstruction would be marked not only by the prodding of the South to turn slaves into freemen, but by the placement of a national yoke on all states who sought escape from the Union. The United States had become a nation, for better and for worse.

The second founding of the United States would concentrate the power that most of the original founders thought so dangerous. The ambitious and power-hungry flocked to the epicenter of politics and economy, seeking to wield influence over their presumed inferiors, as the vanquished Anti-Federalists had predicted. Freedom was on the run, though American power was on the rise.

The United States weathered a series of painful global depressions ranging from 1873 to 1896. By the turn of the century, the crucial elements of the modern state as we now know it were present. The South now consolidated, the intellectual opposition to statism eroded under governmental control of education. Powerful trusts forged ties with corrupt politicians for both influence and protection, pulling the strings for tariffs, subsidies, and even adventurism. The Progressives would develop the intellectual and moral justification for unlimited state intervention; indeed, under the rubric of protecting the consumer, particular monopolies developed and a central bank was formed. And then came World War I.

President Woodrow Wilson had promised not to enter the European war to Americans as one of many campaign pledges he would break. After stalling for three years, the U.S. was pulled into the fray in 1917 by a combination of understandable German hostility to U.S. trade with Britain and an elaborate propaganda campaign undertaken by the Wilson administration. American sailors and doughboys would charge off to foreign shores, striking decisively against the Germans and Austrians and helping to end the bloodiest war in world history. The victory would establish America as a great power for the next century.

Despite an immediate depression upon the termination of the war, America quickly recovered and a post-war boom ensued. Fueled by fantastic technological innovation and an easy money policy, the 1920s would roar towards a devastating crash in 1929. State interventionists like Hoover and FDR were quick to seize upon the opportunity to orchestrate the economy's "recovery," which would not come for another decade. Americans suffered famine, drought, and rampant unemployment, ending only with a catastrophic war foisted upon them by the imperialist Japanese.

The Great Depression was the proving grounds for innumerable social and economic engineering schemes, which exacerbated America's problems. The Alphabet Soup became the alphabet soup kitchen, conditioning Americans to become accustomed to paternalistic government. And re-elect the first father of the country, FDR, is what they did time and time again, apparently not knowing any better. There was not the example of the demise of a Hitler or a Mussolini or a Stalin to teach Americans the danger of concentrated state power. But fortunately for the nation, World War II would acquaint millions of Americans with the hard reality of fascism; the defeat of the Nazis, the fascists in Italy, and the imperial Japanese developed American patriotism as well as an antipathy for virulent nationalism and socialism. Americans oppose tyranny when they see it.

The statists, not dissuaded in the least by the experience, would nonetheless have to conceal their designs on America. Keynesianism, a brand of Fabian socialism, was taken worldwide as a result of the Bretton Woods conference. The Marshall Plan not only helped millions of Europeans, it locked them into dependency on America for aid and security. The rise of the USSR would provide a bi-polar foil to the freedom-loving USA that would rule out the promulgation of naked socialism out-of-hand.

The sacrifice of heroic Americans for the sake of themselves and their European allies would not be appreciated for long overseas. The "greatest generation" had shown tremendous heart and determination, and inspired countless other countrymen; but in Europe, they were all but taken for granted. America stood for freedom in the world, even as the Europeans turned its shoulder on the notion.

In addition, the U.S. faced the task of rebuilding war-ravaged Japan, which it had bombed into submission. The examples of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were seared into the minds of America's adversaries, and deterred others from utilizing the unconscionable weapons. The nation felt that the least it could do was get the mostly brave country back on track, even in light of the cowardly act at Pearl Harbor. After America kicks an enemy down, it offers a hand back up.

When the communist armies of the northern territory of Korea invaded the south, a U.N. resolution was quickly dispatched; but it was assumed that America would do the bulk of the fighting. And fight it did. For three long years, Americans fought on a strategically irrelevant peninsula for the freedom of millions. When the North Koreans pushed, Americans fought on. When the Red Chinese entered the war, Americans fought on. And having pushed back the combined armies to the 38th parallel, America drew a line in the sand and made a promise to defend it. It does to this very day. When Americans came back from this "Forgotten War," they didn't speak of it again. Not only are Americans brave, they are humble.

The height of the Cold War brought fierce competition between America and the communists; a deadly arms race and an equally significant space race was launched in the 1950s. The Soviets had shocked Americans not only with its first nuclear bomb test in 1949, but by beating them to space with Sputnik in 1958. It would take an endeavor of immense proportions, entailing dedication, imagination, and courage for an American to reach space with Apollo 8 in 1968. In the face of numerous setbacks and even a number of astronaut deaths, the U.S. would land a man on the moon with Apollo 11 in 1969. America's pioneering spirit had reached a new zenith.

But along with this unbeatable high came unremitting lows. The Vietnam Conflict would become one of the longest gut-wrenching episodes in American history. Pulled in by a combination of French weakness and principled opposition to communist expansion, America was entrenched over the course of years in highly intense pitched guerrilla warfare. Tens of thousands of soldiers would face nauseating heat, stifling humidity, and relentless insects, even when not fighting the merciless Vietnamese. After twenty years of escalating warfare, without the forceful impetus from the political elite to win the war decisively, the United States withdrew. Vietnam War vets came home without parades or fanfare. In light of America's history of victory at all costs, this must have sown undeserved shame and guilt in the steely veterans' hearts. The determination of the troops was not matched by the resolution of the establishment. The heart of America was being severed from its political head; the fortitude of the citizenry was unmatched by political courage from its nominal leadership.

The 1970s was a time of tremendous uncertainty and anxiety. The oil embargo, stagflation, and the prostrate regime of Jimmy Carter would culminate in humiliation at the hands of Iranians and the growing scourge of international terrorism. It would take a return to principle to steady the nation, and that is exactly what a former actor and governor of California named Ronald Reagan did.

For the first time in three generations, an American president spoke of freedom and actually meant it. Reagan was thus loved by the heart of the country and despised by the head. The Great Communicator spoke to the nation's passions and identity in a way that few presidents did. Americans see themselves as capable and resilient, the political leadership had grown used to defining them as dependent and obeisant. President Reagan breathed fresh air into stale politics and made Americans feel good to be themselves again. When America was given the latitude to get back to work, the greatest economic boom in the nation's history developed.

But Reagan would mark his place in history not only for his wisdom in unleashing the American spirit to create and build, but for engaging a long-time adversary - not just with weapons but with morality itself. The "Evil Empire" in a rotten, decaying state, President Reagan knew that a combination of military-economic pressure and moral challenge would accelerate the communist union's demise.

On June 12, 1987, after two terms of vigorous and principled opposition to socialism at home and abroad, Reagan issued a moral demand:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Gorbachev would not need to tear down the wall, the Berlinners would do it for him. Reagan had struck a great blow for freedom. The political elite shrugged and planned its next subterfuge. Americans rejoiced, for they had helped to liberate their fellow men.

Reagan's principled opposition to statism would not last for long. Although President George H.W. Bush served under Reagan, he was not a fan. Initiation of the First Gulf War would become Bush's most memorable decision, and a tremendous victory for the country's fighting forces abroad. Millions were spared death, mutilation, or rape at the hands of the genocidal Saddam Hussein. But again political courage failed to resolve the matter while the capability of the American military was demonstrably sufficient to do so. Afraid to upset regional powers, Hussein remained dictator and was allowed to flaunt peace terms for another decade. It would take a national emergency of unprecedented proportions to cast new light on the lingering danger of the Iraqi regime.

September 11th, 2001 is quite possibly the darkest day in American history. The nation's psyche was so shaken that a profound sense of unease penetrated all spheres of life for several years. But the country would struggle not only with an invisible menace named terrorism, but with the precarious nature of freedom itself. The War in Afghanistan brought a pledge from George Bush to bring the evildoers to justice, providing some salve to the injury. Yet this just war combined with a war that would sully the image of America in the minds of the citizens. The Iraq War, for better or for worse, would test the limits of people's patience.

The U.S. military was thus under assault not only by ruthless enemies overseas, but by hostile press at home. They fought in unimaginable conditions with less than first-rate equipment. In sand, wind, and heat they continued on. They hunted down the most despicable and cruel of men and brought them to justice. They protected women and children, helped build schools, provided food and medicine, and no doubt comforted as many as practicable. The living hell of war was made that much more unbearable by scorn and ridicule of their very mission. Liberation was no longer a worthy cause for the elite, belying their own shallow valuation of freedom.

Yet American troops fought on, plugging away in the face of daily casualties. The picture in Iraq appeared bleak, by all media accounts. When President Bush proposed a surge to quell the stubborn insurgency, the left balked. Future president Obama would question the wisdom of the plan, and voted against it. Bush deprived the Democrats of a quagmire along the lines of Vietnam, which had given the left so much political capital. The success of the surge demonstrated that when Americans are allowed the freedom to take action, they win, regardless of the odds. If the Democrats allow the troops in Afghanistan to win, they will.

The challenges that our country faces today are immense. Massive debt, intrusive government, and an openly seditious president are among the obstacles that are placed before us. The Roman senator Cicero, who lived during the collapse of the Roman Republic, and who opposed the rise of Caesar, describes the nature of the traitor, in terms vividly appropriate for President Barack Obama:

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.

But President Obama is just one man. Removing him from office would be a resounding success, but would signal only a long and arduous process to restore freedom. A powerful cadre has infiltrated the halls of government to establish itself as a ruling elite who will dictate terms to a permanent underclass, in flagrant disregard of our Constitution. We must fight to preserve America's place in history; we must act like historic men.

Will we be so cowardly to cede the lamp of liberty to those who would snuff it out, casting the world into darkness for a thousand years? This is surely our fate should today's political elites prevail. It is time to take up the mantle of our forefathers and become the champions of liberty. After all, we are Americans. It is our job to overcome the odds.

Leftism for Dummies

2010-08-19T20:24:00.001-07:00

1. Make up your perfect fantasy land

2. Trash anything that does not match said fantasy land

3. Work to destroy anything that is not in your fantasy land

4. Villainize all who tell you your fantasy land isn't real

5. Support leaders who promise you your fantasy land

6. When things get worse and worse, and people scream at you to stop, remain firm in belief that your fantasy land is near

7. When system collapses, act shocked when jackbooted dictators take over and fail to deliver fantasy land

8. Get locked in gulag, wonder what happened

9. Receive thanks from those who told you so

10. Apologize to the victims?

11. A bullet to the back of the head

Ayn Rand on Descartes, the Founder of Modern Philosophy

2010-08-19T02:50:00.000-07:00

Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): “the prior certainty of consciousness,” the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one’s consciousness—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one’s consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor’s blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perceptions—then of sensations.
When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers’ rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of.
(For the New Intellectual)

Deprogramming the Left

2010-08-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

The Republic is being destroyed from within by a contingency of radicals set on leveling the capitalist economy and crushing the American dream. These true believers are resistant to their political opposition's declamations to cease and desist in their hostile and inhumane activities.

No exhortations succeed in deterring them.

Though a minority, these radicals wield immense influence over millions from their well-situated positions in the news media, entertainment industry, courts, schools, and universities. Those who would dare cross these activists may find themselves slurred in a "respected" newspaper or targeted by a nightly "news" host. These radicals have no respect for morality or decency, employing an Alinskyite ends-justify-the-means mentality while carrying out their strategy of political warfare.

For any insurgency, successful political warfare consists primarily of winning hearts and minds. And this is the key to understanding the left's mental guerrilla warfare.

Not having created or produced anything useful themselves, leftists have no demonstrable accomplishments for people to admire. Everything the left 'accomplishes' is predicated on the labor, creativity, and productivity of others. The left cannot point to the miraculous victory of the American revolution and the unprecedented establishment of a government based on the ideal of human freedom. They cannot point to the immense good that has proceeded from industrialism harnessed by a free market. They can only criticize the "good for being the good," as Ayn Rand put it, and this is the essence of the New Left's "Critical Theory."

To accomplish a mindset guided by the rejection of facts, reason, evidence, and reality, one must achieve two things: The instillation of an all-encompassing utopian worldview held together by sheer emotion, and the social reinforcement of the moral imperative to reject any contradicting evidence, which becomes perceived by the subject as an alien element that threatens the integrity of the utopian worldview.

The radicals' minds are thus systematically programmed from the earliest age to reject facts, evidence, logic, and reason. Abusing social trust when they ascend to authority figures in schools and universities, radicals manipulate the learning environment of students by pressuring or alienating non-conformists. Much of the indoctrination of the next generation of radicals occurs in two ways; the first manner I have to coin "compassionism," the second, is aesthetics.

The pretense that liberals are more compassionate than conservatives is the cornerstone of the leftist indoctrination process. It is what maintains the leftist's distorted mental infrastructure in light of rational argumentation and counterfactual information.

Utilizing the pretense of authority in the presence of the mentally vulnerable, radicals overwhelm any rational resistance to their program with scorn, ridicule, and if necessary, force.

Radicals are not content to indoctrinate the young, of course, They must broaden their assault on the capitalist system. The means of transmitting leftist anti-values in the public sphere tends to fall under the umbrella of aesthetics. Art, music, and film are the trojan horses for inculcating or reinforcing leftism in the masses, oftentimes without people's awareness of it.

The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci realized that politics is carried out on two planes: The hegemonic cultural plane (the dominant set of ideas, values, and beliefs that support and sustain the "superstructure") and the economic base. If leftists came out and outright attacked the hegemonic culture, or "capitalism," there would be instant reaction and opposition.

Instead of carrying our this suicidal plan, neomarxists (the heirs of Marxism who acknowledged the shortcomings of its materialist doctrine) set themselves to infiltrating the cultural institutions, and from there would dictate "political correctness." Their strategy of infiltration was to diffuse the perception of threat to the capitalist system (which the great majority of people benefited from) by undertaking various seemingly innocuous but destructive "causes" like feminism, environmentalism, and black liberation theology, while hiding under the veil of "compassion." Needless to say, there is nothing "compassionate" about destroying the capitalist economy, and the human freedom that both drives it and is sustained by it.

Confident that they have captured the institutions of culture, law, and education, the radicals now feel confident that they can openly capture the economic base. Although they have eroded private property and the independence it gives rise to for over a century, at no point has their assault on the capitalist base been so brazen.

If the neomarxist plan is to fail, and there is some indication that it is struggling to win either the hearts and minds of the public (see here and here) or the enforcement apparatus of military and the police, we must wage an assault upon the leftists' ideals, which are precisely divorced from reality.

But how to implement reason in those people who have been indoctrinated to be both irrational and uncritical in regards to their own belief system? The following is a plan that will confront the irrational, and especially, the intelligent but half-rational, leftists and force them to acknowledge the premises that rationality, freedom, and capitalism are built upon.

Since open political confrontation would provoke immediate reaction from the leftist, or from those guided by leftist assumptions, we should carry out our deprogramming process on the seemingly unpolitical level of assumptions.

Those familiar with post-modernist critique will immediately understand what I am driving at. Post-modernism holds that there are "subaltern" political ideas that are manifested in the culture; including in literature, art, and "news "narratives. The leftist have used "narratives" to mask their plans to delegitimize any universalist claims to human morality and decency, thereby robbing us of our Enlightenment legacy. A perfectly anti-Gramscian counter-offensive begins by giving rise to the sublimated; by engaging in the ongoing tacit political warfare that takes place in the culture between elections.

We all have recognized a certain helpless feeling in ourselves while anticipating the elections that increasingly seem to decide the fate of our Republic. While the left carries its warfare our on a day-to-day basis, we are left breathlessly fighting at shadows or striking out at the superficial manifestations of the fundamental, deeper war taking place for our minds.

Here is something we all can do, or to integrate into our daily battles with the left, who are, for all intents and purposes, crypto-communists. It integrates and makes explicit common-sense, which is appreciated by the dwindling majority of people who work in material reality, and undercuts the irrational and unrealistic basis that leftism is erected upon.

The following is but an illustration of the kinds of assumptions that can be directly attacked while maintaining an apolitical veneer. I recommend forcing a true or false response, or a yes or no answer, from the soft leftist, and explicitly reinforcing such assumptions in our youth, who are exposed most intensely to leftist arguments:

Deprogramming the left

1. Rationality (or preferences among alternatives)

Do we have to make choices in life?
Are some options better than others?
Are all opinions equal?
Do actions have reactions?
Does behavior have consequences?
What would a life without science look like?
Is emotion sufficient for man's survival?

2. Morality
Do we make up morality?
Or is there some other source (i.e., reality) that morality derives from?
Is a man born into the world owned by others? Or is he free?
Should good behavior be rewarded?
Should bad behavior be punished?
Should feeling good be the basis for morality?
Can one have a right that imposes a demand on another's life or labor? If so, what happens to others' rights?
Who controls the expenditure of one's energy?
Who should control how one lives one's life, as long as it doesn't interfere with others' lives?
What does freedom mean? Does it mean the ability to make choices among alternatives?
What is the relationship of reality to freedom?
Can politicians be trusted to safeguard your freedom?
Do groups actually exist in reality? Or, do collectives actually exist?
Are some cultures better for human beings than others?
Should countries strive to become better or should they strive to become equal with others?

3. Economy (the most overly political and the most difficult for radicals to understand)
Should human beings have to work to live?
Is labor an assumption of human life? In other words, is your labor voluntary?
Should where you work and how you work be voluntary?
Do you control what you buy, or does what you buy control you? If so, how does it control you?
What interest does your boss have in employing you?
Are your interests and your boss's interests opposed to one another?
Are there material limits on resources?
If so, what does this imply for an economy?
How should we recognize limits on resources and how they get distributed? By what politicians want, or by what individuals want?
Are individuals similar or different? Is so, why?
Think of a random number from one to a hundred. Why don't I think the same number?
Is money different from wealth?
Does printing money increase wealth?
Should paper money represent value?
If one is paid money, should it be in trade or for adding value to the economy?
What happens when the government gives money to unproductive people?
What are the consequences of this for those who do produce goods and services?
Is debt a good or a bad thing?
Do debts have to be paid back?

These are but some illustrations of the main idea, and that is to uproot leftism by attacking its unrealistic and irrational assumptions. To force people to make prudent and wise choices, both personally and politically, this is the ultimate task that is required to re-establish and sutain a rational, free, and prosperous nation.

The Need to Reform Public Education

2010-08-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

Every year Americans are increasingly appalled by the nation's decline, but seem unwilling or unable to properly attribute the source our intellectual and moral decay: The "state-run" education system. Entrusting their childrens' education to the power-hungry, parents are amazed when politicians instrumentalize their childrens' minds as a means to preserving their own power. Yet they need not be surprised. The goal of the state is to expand the power of the state; and this includes power over the human mind.

The abysmal state of public or "state-run" education is well-documented. Sub-standard math and science education (evidenced by deteriorating international test scores), as well as skyrocketing costs and an increasingly immoral curricula (including pre-teen sex education and environmentalist indoctrination), have led to the creation of an irrational, immoral, and confused electorate. This proposes tremendous problems for American patriots, whose political ideology is explicitly predicated on history and rationality.

But it also presents a political opportunity. Many parents are disappointed and angry at the education system (but not educators) for the government's repeated failure to educate their children. High school dropout rates, especially among so-called "minorities," show that the problem is not just one of quality, but one of motivation. To quote one source to show the magnitude of the problem:

"Nationally, about 71 percent of all students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma [29% do not], but barely half of African American and Hispanic students earn diplomas with their peers. In many states the difference between white and minority graduation rates is stunning; in several cases there is a gap of as many as 40 or 50 percentage points."

But per usual, education experts persistently miss the point. Educators blame parents, a lack of funding, but rarely, themselves. The administration's opposition to successful charter schools showed even minorities where the state stands on who should have control of the education of children. The stealth passage of student loan nationalization in the healthcare bill showed that the government is no longer content to have direct control of the education of children, but young adults as well. The confrontation between Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and the teacher's unions has led to surprising support for bringing teachers (and other "public servants") back to economic reality, while imposing on them some standards of performance. This public support also shows that education reform is a potential winning agenda item that could, if handled properly, lead to laying the foundation for a generation of more rational, more responsible, more capable, and more liberty-loving Americans.

But we shouldn't be too pollyannish in our expectation that we can overtake an overhaul of education in this country overnight. We have a dedicated and ruthless opposition that has embedded itself at every level of academia. The current education system is dominated by leftist social engineers to the point that it is nearly unbearable for any free-thinking American to bear it. They are smug, arrogant, and ruthless, and can only be exposed through focused, dedicated, and blunt opposition. We must begin the path to uprooting the would-be dictators by telling our leaders that we believe education reform to be a crucial agenda item.

Education is the key to the political power of the left, as the 1960s radical generation currently in government knows full well. William Ayers, the terrorist radical who was "transformed" by the left into a respected educator, in an interview with the tellingly-named Revolution, stated the following:

"That’s one of the things that’s actually annoyed me for about 40 years of being a progressive educator: the separation of the concept of progressive education from the concept of politics and political change. You can’t separate them…and this is a contradiction, incidentally, that goes all the way back to the beginning of progressive education and really the beginning of the conversations about the relationship between school and society."

As Orwell might comment on the mentality of these leftist ends-justify-the-means "revolutionaries": "One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship." For educators of Ayers' ilk (and we can infer the radical ideological affinity of many educators by their reverence for the bomb-thrower Ayers), state education is the means for social and therefore political transformation.

But there are two flaws in the left's program, and these are turning out to prove deadly. First, and we must only touch on it briefly, the New Left idealists disregard reality, and overestimate the power of their ideas to transform it. Essentially, to refer to the mass suicide at Jonestown, they "drink their own Kool-aid."

Second, and more to the point here, state indoctrination does not lead in the long-run to an army of lock-step true believers, but rather to apathetic human putty. When mobilizing for human action (to use Mises' term), one must appreciate that individuals control the expenditure and the direction of their energies; this is in accordance with Rose Wilder Lane's thesis in her outstanding and overlooked work "The Discovery of Freedom."

Let us briefly touch on this work to show the opposition of government and education. If we follow Lane, the essence of government is force, and "The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government." (29) In her view, the government always derives its power (to use force) from the consent of the governed" (30), a consent that the American government is perilously close to losing. Important to Lane's work is the idea that "Historically, this monopoly is always a use of force to hinder, restrict or stop the productive uses of human energy." (31) As Jefferson put it, government is "a necessary evil."

Yet the would be philosopher-kings of an imagined American "republic" (rather, a totalitarian utopian society), dismiss an ancient dictum from the proto-fascist Plato himself: "[K]nowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind." The implication is that mass indoctrination does not lead to fanaticism, per se, but apathy and anomie. The aimlessness of intellectual and moral life leads wittingly or unwittingly to a totalitarian state, as Hayek pointed out in The Road to Serfdom:

"To be a useful assistant in the running of a totalitarian state, it is not enough that a man should be prepared actively to break every moral rule he has ever known if this seems necessary to achieve the end set for him. Since it is the supreme leader who alone determines the ends, his instruments must have no moral convictions of their own. They must, above all, be unreservedly committed to the person of the leader; but next to this the most important thing is that they should be completely unprincipled and literally capable of anything. They must have no ideals of their own which they want to realize; no ideas about right or wrong which might interfere with the intentions of the leader. [...] The only tastes which are satisfied are the taste for power as such and the pleasure of being obeyed and being part of a well-functioning and immensely powerful machine to which everything else must give way. Yet while there is little that is likely to induce men who are good by our standards to aspire to leading positions in the totalitarian machine, and much to deter them, there will be special opportunities for the ruthless and unscrupulous." (168-169)

It is this form of "education," one that is intentionally designed to lead to the formation of "robots," and not thinking adults capable of the self-governance required to preserve liberty, described at length by education reform activist John Taylor Gatto.

Gatto, in his The Underground History of American Education (available online) and Dumbing Us Down, thoroughly documents the agenda of corporations and left-wing activists like John Dewey to transform America into a gulag-state. The results of the state-run education program? Students who are, to put it in Gatto's words, "needy, frightened, envious, bored, talentless and incomplete."

It should be pointed out briefly that Gatto misattributes the current state of education to the designs of rich industrialists more than one hundred years ago, who wanted to create worker-automatons in the Taylorist mold. Such a program, if ever there was one, is obsolete today. The consequences of Dewey's program is to turn our schools into little laboratories, ahistorical and anti-conservative in the profoundist sense, where social engeineers can perform endless experiments justified by "pragmatism," and thus without political consequence. Besides this point, America's manufacturing base has been driven out of this country by leftists since the 1970s, with high corporate taxes and stringent environmentalist and financial regulations, to be replaced by a dependent and unproductive social welfare and technocratic bureaucracy. But regardless, Gatto documents and describes our education system in exhaustive detail. For further documentation of the political censorship of though, from a supposedly "balanced" perspective, see Diane Raditch's The Language Police.

For a deeper, philosophical analysis we can turn to Professor Alan Bloom, who wrote the pathbreaking work on the state of education in our country The Closing of the American Mind (1987). Bloom deconstructed the modern American psyche and served notice for our nation's perilous road. His insights are shrewd and many, and worth recounting here - but I will proffer the most direct and relevant.

The key to Bloom's analysis is that a certain kind of "openness" and even "indiscriminateness" are the virtues, indeed the "moral imperatives," of our time. As Bloom writes:

Openness - and the relativism that makes it the only plausible stance in the face of various claims to truth and various ways of life and kinds of human beings - is the great insight of our times. The true believer is the real danger. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and this led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. (26)

In an an unattributed reference to Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (or perhaps the nouveau derivation Harry Eckstein's "congruence theory") Bloom then postulates:

Always important is the political regime, which needs citizens who are in accord with its fundamental principle...We began with the model of the rational and industrious man, who was honest, respected the laws, and was dedicated to the family...Above all he was to know the rights doctrine; the Constitution, which embodied it; and American history, which presented and celebrated the founding of a nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." A powerful attachment to the letter and spirit of the Declaration of Independence gently conveyed, appealing to each man's reason, was the goal of the education of the democratic man. (26-27) (emphasis my own)

Then, for implications providing for the disconnect between the 1960s generation and their progeny, and that of the prior generations:

The recent education of openness has rejected all that. It pays no attention to natural rights or the historical origins of our regime, which are now thought to have been flawed and regressive. It is progressive and forward looking. (27)

The crux of this progressive worldview is the ingrained attitude of openness. Professor Bloom clarifies:

Openness used to be the virtue that permitted us to seek the good by using reason. It now means accepting everything and denying reason's power (38)...there are two kinds of openness, the openness of indifference - promoted with the twin purposes of humbling our intellectual pride and letting us be whatever we want to be, just as long as we don't want to be knowers - and the openness that invites us to quest for knowledge and certitude for which history and the various cultures provide a brilliant array of examples for examination. This second kind of openness encourages the desire..."I want to know what is good for me, what will make me happy" - while the former stunts that desire. (41)

Bloom's prognosis is disconcerting, and indicates that we must rectify our fallacious philosophical delusions with haste. As he writes:

Unfortunately the West is defined by its need for justification of its ways and values, by its need for discovery of nature, by its need for philosophy and science. This is its cultural imperative. Deprived of that, it will collapse. The United States is one of the highest and most extreme achievements of the rational quest for the good life according to nature. (39)

Bloom, who appreciates Frederic Nietzsche's insights into the decay of Western Civilization, nonetheless misses a Nietzschean implication of the above-mentioned "education of the democratic man."

We, who hold a different belief--we, who regard the democratic movement, not only as a degenerating form of political organization, but as equivalent to a degenerating, a waning type of man, as involving his mediocrising and depreciation: where have WE to fix our hopes? (…) The democratizing of Europe will tend to the production of a type prepared for SLAVERY in the most subtle sense of the term. (…) I meant to say that the democratising of Europe is at the same time an involuntary arrangement for the rearing of TYRANTS.

Evan Sayet, with explicit reference to Alan Bloom, expands on Bloom's discussion of the "indiscriminateness" of modern liberals in a provocative and accessible lecture, and how it leads to a failure of moral, social, and political judgment.

The state of mind among many in our citizenry described by Hayek, Gatto, Bloom, and Sayet above poses nearly endless problems for the country, and numerous obstacles for tea party activists. The inability of many to exercise judgment makes appeals to reasoned argument almost fruitless. Appeals to emotion in some cases must necessarily be employed until a comprehensive reform of education, including the defederalization of the education system, can be undertaken. In other words, we must state the need for reform in the most compelling moral terms.

But any impetus for reform, as Americans saw in Texas, will be met with swift and fierce opposition. Leftists will often cite Thomas Jefferson as an early advocate of public education (and the next breath, a bigoted white slaveowner and nothing more, to boot). Jefferson, whose mind demonstrates the faith in universal education emblematic of The Enlightenment, was indeed a proponent of public education for all citizens. But as he was an Anti-Federalist, he was not a supporter of federal government-run education.

To quote just one of Jefferson's many statements on public education:

"If twelve or fifteen hundred schools are to be placed under one general administration, an attention so divided will amount to a dereliction of them to themselves. It is surely better, then, to place each school at once under the care of those most interested in its conduct."

Thus even by Jeffersonian standards a reform of "public" education would entail deconstructing the national infrastructure, and thus defusing elitists' control, of education.

But in the long-run, more radical steps are required. We must ensure that there is a marketplace in education and alternatives for parents whose childrens' schools are failing them, including home-schooling and tax-credits (at least until a fair tax can be enacted). [For more on this perspective one can watch the Sheldon Richman speech "Education and The State" available at the Foundation for Economic Education site. For the most radical ideal scenario, and the one most conducive to sustaining liberty, one can listen to Ayn Rand's "Issues in Education" speech or read her amazing collection of essays The Return of the Primitive.]

Ayn Rand pointed out more than fifty years that the ultimate source of the radicals power is the schools and universities. This is confirmed by the experience of those who have attended public education at all levels, and have seen the left's explicitly Deweyan-Gramscian program put into action. We must be at least as serious and determined as our opponents if we expect to win the political war for our republic taking place. And the first step towards victory comes with recognizing that the political battlefield is the human mind itself. We must, with Jefferson, swear "upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."

Why the Dems' Putsch Will Ultimately Fail

2010-08-12T08:12:00.001-07:00

Why the Democrats' putsch* will ultimately fail:

1. The economy will not recover before November 2010 or 2012.

2. The Democrats have not successfully dehumanized their opposition or smeared the tea party.

3. The Supreme Court has upheld free speech, for now, and truth has had a chance to get its pants on to catch up with Democrat lies.

4. The Democrats "hope and change" mantra is next to dead, along with the "post-racial presidency" narrative.

5. The mainstream media continues to shrink in size and influence.

6. People are noticing how our schools are dumbing our kids down, through incompetence and a corrupt curriculum. This leads to parental distrust of the schools and universities and mentally preparing children to deal with the lies.

7. The military enlisted men are not sympathetic to the socialist agenda.

8. Emergency personnel and police tend not to be sympathetic to the socialist agenda, and have no interest in committing violence against Americans.

9. Infighting among power elites (such as at Copenhagen).

10. Once the American people see the enemy, they defeat it.

* Due to inaccurate definitions on the web, the term "putsch" must be defined here. A putsch is not "the sudden overthrow of a government,"which is a romanticization of the term. It is most accurately the sudden and illegitimate seizure of power by a minority group, typically one that has infiltrated the government.

The Triumph of the State

2010-08-10T06:55:00.000-07:00

An Englishmen recently observed that the presidency (if we may be lenient enough to call it that) of Barack Obama has taken on the vestiges of the once-deposed Ancien Regime. Yet this is no surprise, given that is has been the priority of the left for over a century to reverse the gains of The Enlightenment.

To understand how this tragic turn of affairs has come about, we must first assess the constituency of the modern American left, which we may describe as a conglomerate of megalomaniacs, socialist casuists, and an ever-expanding victim clientele.

The left purports to engage in class warfare, but inevitably their stranglehold on economy, society, and politics leads to the ossification of the most primitive of class structures: A pyramid of power elites, a secular priesthood (professional sophists), apparatchiks, and the great unwashed masses.

For those familiar with history, the parallels between the culmination of the leftist program with the stratified societies of ancient civilizations are too unmistakable to miss.

It should be noted that although America's road to serfdom began in earnest under Bush's presidency, the Democrats lined up in tow to back the Patriot Act, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (for all intents and purposes, the Congress abrogated its responsibility to declare war), as well as the massive expansion of Medicare. The presidency of Obama built on Bush's police state infrastructure to institutionalize a state of economic chaos. The whiff of totalitarian ambitions is now unmistakable.

It is crucial to recognize that the reason the United States is being transformed into a neofeudal society is not due to any particular party, but to the fact that we are swimming in the modern manifestations of primitive ideology: Mysticism and socialism.

What the world is currently experiencing, threatening the upheaval of freedom in the West, and thus on the entire planet, is a convergence of European etatism and American welfare statism. What is the basis of this convergence, and to what condition of humanity is it leading?

Unbeknown to the majority of people, who are disposed to ignore how ideas rule their lives, whether they acknowledge it or not, the source of the universal drive to construct the all-powerful State is political ideology. Specifically, it is the left's political program of obliterating The Enlightenment.

To appreciate the significance of such a program we must turn to the history of ideas, and how ideas both reflect and drive politics. Recognizing first that the American and European political experiences are quite different, we must proceed along two tracts.

First, Europe. We begin with The Enlightenment, the political philosophical movement best encapsulated by Locke, but abutted by Scottish Enlightenment philosophers such as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Adam Ferguson.

Locke obliterated the premises of the "Divine Right" of kings utilizing rational argumentation and Christianity itself. Locke would inspire such American revolutionists as Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, whose thoughts represent key touchstones connecting the European and American political experiences.

Let us return to Europe. Briefly following the American Revolution, the French undertook their own program to rid themselves of the Ancien Regime. Unfortunately for France and the whole of Europe following, the Frenchmen did not take seriously the entirety of the tripartite schema of "liberte, fraternite, and egalite," conflating liberty with libertine. The democratic fervor in France, which dispensed of the monarchy of King Louis XVI, was whipped up into the Great Terror, followed by the Thermidorean reaction against the Jacobins, ushering in the emperor Bonaparte. This turn of events proceeded as the American Founders, save the participant in the French Revolution Thomas Paine, might have foreseen.

The Prussians, aghast at the brutal effectiveness of the nationalistic French under Bonaparte, were driven even further along in their proto-nationalistic impulses by romanticism and the thinking of the statist-collectivist Hegel. Hegel's vision of the unity of the universal in the particular, and the particular in the universal, is the essential drive of all totalitarian regimes.

We must only briefly mention Hegel's pupil Karl Marx in order to more fully appreciate the significance of Hegelian thought in both American and European history.

Karl Marx's materialist dialectics represented the perfect ideological canon to destroy not just capitalism, but all economics based on reality (based on the assumption of scarcity, viz.). Marxism's assertion that change is synthetic wars against reason itself, and the (Aristotelian) assumptions that underpin Western notions of causality. Marx's philosophy, if taken seriously, destroys social orders, leading ineluctably and inevitably to dictatorship.

But back to Hegel. Today's left, not just in Europe but in America, are not followers of Marx in the pure sense, though they instrumentalize Marxian concepts such as class warfare, but are more driven to the Idealism of Hegel. Fusing Hegel with the nihilism of Nietszche, the (moral) categorical imperatives of Kant, and the pragmatism of James and Dewey, today's New Left carries out a program of social re-engineering using lies, myths, and "critical theory."

Critical theory, developed by the Frankfurt School of neomarxists, is the destructive program that asserts no positive remedy for mankind except to destroy capitalism, whose assumption of private property is the lynchpin that underlay the individual freedoms espoused by The Enlightenment.

The Frankfurt School was led most notably by Theodore Adorno, who reworked Marxian radicalism into a more Hegelian idealist program and then set up the Institute for Social Research at Columbia University. Adorno and his colleage Max Horkheimer would go on to write The Dialectic of Enlightenment, a critique of The Enlightenment that is the core text of Critical Theory.

Other European neomarxists, such as Gyorgy Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci, would inspire the New Left in America. Saul Alinsky, one such neomarxist who taught the "pragmatic radicals" in his charge that the "ends justify the means," changed the attitude of leftists towards power and exhorted them to seize it at all costs. And that is precisely what self-described Alinsky followers Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did.

The Marxist redistributive policies of Europe are leading it inexorably to its nadir. Economies are declining with no end in sight, due partially to unfavorable demographics and partially to quixotic social welfare schemes. The trajectory of Europe is the vision of America's future: The triumph of the state, and the return of the arbitrary, pre-modern rule of self-appointed elites, sycophantic intellectuals, and a great underclass of humanity, perpetually in need, and perpetually restrained from improving its own lot.

The Founding Fathers' Vision

2010-08-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

After six years of dragging out a war that was ended at last by foreign help, and six more years of confusion and discouragement, when Washington no longer had even as much hope as he had felt at Valley Forge, they made one last effort to save the Revolution, and wrote the Federal Constitution.

With sound common sense, they did not debate it publicly.

They opened the convention by shutting its doors and pledging their honor to keep their discussion secret. That handful of veterans, and the assembly of young men in their thirties, were hard-headed realists. They knew that nothing but rockbottom honesty and plain speaking could save the existence of the Revolution and no public man but Thomas Paine had ever risked telling the truth in public.

They had no fantastic faith in The People; no more notion of consulting or obeying public opinion than Wilbur Wright had when he was trying to invent an airplane. They knew that every man's real responsibility is to his own moral standard.

As Washington realistically said, "If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend it? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and just can repair. The event is in the hand of God."

For weeks they struggled, with argument and compromise and bargain, to construct a new kind of Government. They disagreed so profoundly that the job seemed impossible; they adjourned for three days, agreeing to spend that time not with their supporters, but in the company of their opponents.

The Constitution was not their ideal; it was the practical best that they could get. It was a compromise, it was an effort.

It was a desperate hope.

Then they went out and fought, for two years more, with every political weapon they had, against the powerful pressure group that was demanding the one-man responsibility of monarchy.

They fought, with argument, with speeches, with appeals to logic and justice and common sense, with pamphlets and newspapers and books, and political deals, with every weapon they had they fought against the rioting mobs that were demanding democracy, the majority-rule that always creates an irresponsible tyrant.

And when they won, when they got nine States to accept the Constitution as amended with ten additional prohibitions of Government, when at least they had saved the existence of the Revolution through that crisis, Jefferson could only say that they had done the best they could do.

The future, he said, must show the results. Whatever the results might be, they depended upon individuals, since every individual is self-governing.

American Constitutional Government is now the oldest existing Government. It is the only form of Government now on earth that has been flexible enough, well enough adjusted to reality, to survive the strains of one century and a half.

All other Governments have been shattered during that time, either by war or by the conflict between human energy and the Government's coercive force.

The men who invented this kind of Government were not enthusiasts. They worked out no plan for a better world; they had no illusions and no dreams of any Utopia. You can see their realism in the Constitutions they wrote. They designed the Federal Constitution with the firm intention of preventing any man in public office from using Government's monopoly of force, to seize, torture and arbitrarily kill ordinary Americans.

(Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane)

Universal Suffrage vs Universal Liberty

2010-08-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

When American politicians took the election of the President of the United States into their hands, they had no idea that this would be the result. No one then imagined that everyone should vote, or ever would vote. In all the States, voting was restricted.

Today, voting is an American superstition. Hardly anyone ever thinks about it. Americans take it for granted that every human being has a natural right to vote.

Of course this is not true. No one has a natural right to vote. Everyone is born with inalienable liberty, but nobody is born with an inalienable ballot. (…)
For why does anyone suppose that a majority of citizens should control their Government?

No one imagines that a majority of passengers should control a plane. No one assumes that, by majority vote, the patients, nurses, elevator boys and cooks and ambulance drivers and interns and telephone operators and students and scrubwomen in a hospital should control the hospital. Would you ever ride on a train if all passengers stepped into booths in the waiting-room and elected the train crews by majority vote, as intelligently as you elect the men whose names appear in lists before you in a voting booth?

Then why is it taken for granted that every person is endowed on his twenty-first birthday with a God-given right and ability to elect the men who decide questions of political philosophy and international diplomacy?

This fantastic belief is no part of the American Revolution. Thomas Paine, Madison, Monroe, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, did not entertain it for a moment. When this belief first affected American Government, it broke John Quincy Adams' heart; to him it meant the end of freedom on earth; it made him doubt the goodness of his God. The superstition that all men have a right to vote is a triumph of Old World reasoning. (…) Just as doggedly, they believe that Authority, Government, controls all men. If they do not flatly deny that men are free, they reason this way: To control himself, an individual must control the Government that controls him. (…)

The Old World belief is this: Individuals are cells in a greater organism. All men are naturally dependent, obedient, controlled by Authority. (Communists, Fascists and Nazis say this in a cliche, "The individual is nothing.") Government is Authority, controlling the masses and responsible for their welfare. Therefore, the stronger the Government, the better for the masses. Liberty is the right of the masses to choose the men who control the masses. It is doubtful whether it is advisable to grant the masses this liberty; but, if it is granted, it is a right to vote.

(…) Thus, the largest possible number of persons will control the Government that controls them. Then what becomes of the exercise of freedom by the individuals in the minority? Why, they must submit to control by the majority. Everyone should be happy to sacrifice himself (the Greeks did) to the pagan god Demos, The Greatest Number. The voice of the Greatest Number is the voice of God. If anyone is not willing to obey the Greatest Number; why, this is outrageous, this is anti-social; make him submit and obey. (…)

This is not the reasoning of the Americans who wrote the Constitutions that protect individual freedom. It is not the reasoning of many Americans now. But it is the reasoning that has been extending the vote in these States for half a century.

Small groups of reformers, fiercely determined to do good to others, have made these extensions by using the threat of the vote upon office-holders. A few crooked politicians and ward-heelers have aided them. They have worked against the vast indifference of most Americans. For instance: American women did not want to vote; Miss Alice Paul forced woman's suffrage through Congress and the State legislatures. These extensions of the vote are in two directions; they take in increasing numbers of the population, and they throw more office-holders to the wolves of "a common passion or interest felt by the majority." (…)

Average Americans have common sense. They know that there are always enough stupid, ignorant, dishonest voters to carry any election; they know that demagogues, liars, hillbilly bands, popular actors and orators, free picnics and votebuying can always corral enough voters. They know that these extensions of the franchise have broken down the moral standards of American politics, and have so overcome the moral character of American politicians that both parties use these methods of getting votes. And that therefore an election is merely a sporting event, like a ball game, its outcome depending on luck as well as on skill, and its object being no more than to get ballots into boxes, and men into office. Unquestionably, these extensions of the franchise are dangerous to individual liberty and human rights.

They are dangerous because, by amending the Constitutions, they destroy representative government and increase the danger of democracy—which always creates an irresponsible tyrant.

And they are dangerous because they are made in the superstitious belief that individuals can control a Government that can control individuals, and therefore they tend to increase the false, counter-revolutionary belief that Government is an Authority controlling men and responsible for their welfare.

More and more, the multitudes who vote are believing this, and demanding that Government be responsible for their living conditions. (…)

The increasing belief that everyone has a natural right to vote because voting is mass-control of a Government that controls individuals, is counter-revolutionary in these States. It is a revival of the ancient Old World superstition. It threatens every American's home and liberty and life; it threatens the existence of the Republic and the survival of the Revolution.

(Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane)

The American World Revolution

2010-08-09T05:57:00.000-07:00

What is the meaning of this Republic in history, but an unprecedented fury of human energy, attacking the non-human world, and making this earth more habitable for human beings?

Swiftly, in seventy years, Americans have built defenses against darkness—from pine-knots and candles to kerosene lamps, gas jets, electric bulbs, neon lights, fluorescent tubes.

In my lifetime, Americans have created astounding defenses against weather—from fireplace and stove to furnaces, radiators, automatic oil-burners, insulation, air-conditioning.

Americans make the stupendous attack on Space: steamboats, railroads, subways, automobiles, planes, stratosphere flying, inter-planetary rockets. And on Time: telegraph, transoceanic cables, telephones, radio, television.

In less than one century, human energy—only in these States and on the western rim of Europe—has made such a terrific attack on the enemies of human life that it has created the whole modern world.

Why was such an attack never made before?

For sixty known centuries, multitudes of men have lived on this earth. Their situation has been the everlasting human situation. Their desire to live has been as strong as ours. Their energy has always been enough to make this earth at least habitable for human beings. Their intelligence has been great.

Yet for six thousand years, most men have been hungry.

Famines have always killed multitudes, and still do over most of this earth. Ninety-five years ago, the Irish were starving to death; no one was surprised. Europeans had never expected to get from this earth enough food to keep them all alive.

Why did men die of hunger, for six thousand years?

Why did they walk, and carry goods and other men on their backs, for six thousand years, and suddenly, in one century, only on a sixth of this earth's surface, they make steamships, railroads, motors, airplanes, and now are flying around the earth in its utmost heights of air?

Why did families live six thousand years in floorless hovels, without windows or chimneys, then, in eighty years and only in these United States, they are taking floors, chimneys, glass windows for granted, and regarding electric lights, porcelain toilets, and window screens as minimum necessities?

Why did workers walk barefoot, in rags, with lousy hair and unwashed teeth, and workingmen wear no pants, for six thousand years, and here, in less than a century—silk stockings, lip sticks, permanent waves, sweaters, overcoats, shaving cream, safety razors. It's incredible.

For thousands of years, human beings use their energies in unsuccessful efforts to get wretched shelter and meager food.

Then on one small part of the earth, a few men use their energies so effectively that three generations create a completely new world.

What explains this? (…)

(The American constitutions), while it granted certain limited permissions to men in Government, also definitely prohibited their using force as Governments always had used force.

These prohibitions are called the Bills of Rights.

The name is not a good one, because it is not accurate.

It confuses a careless mind.

The name, "Bill of Rights," is English. It is accurate in

England. The English Bill of Rights is a statement of certain freedoms which British Government permits to its subjects.

An American Bill of Rights is the exact reverse of the

English one. The "Bill of Rights" in American Constitutions is a statement of the uses of force which American citizens do not permit to men in American Government.

This difference is of the utmost importance. It is the essence of this World Revolution. This difference is the whole difference between American revolutionary Government and all other Governments in past history or on earth now.

(Discovery of Freedom by Rose Wilder Lane)