White Bird

This song has been haunting me today. Do you remember it?

White bird,
in a golden cage,
on a winter's day,
in the rain.
White bird,
in a golden cage,
alone.

The leaves blow,
Across the long black road.
To the darkened skies,
in its rage
But the white bird just sits in her cage,
unknown.

White bird must fly
Or she will die

White bird,
dreams of the aspen trees,
with their dying leaves,
turning gold.
But the white bird just sits in her cage,
growing old.

White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.

The sunsets come, the sunsets go.
The clouds roll by,and the earth turns old.
And the young bird's eyes do always glow.
She must fly,
She must fly,
She must fly.

White bird,
In a golden cage,
On a winter's day, in the rain.
White bird,
In a golden cage alone.

White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.
White bird must fly or she will die.

Here's how I interpret it: There are two kinds of enslavement; real slavery of the gun and whip represented by the cage and mental slavery the bird has imposed upon herself because she's afraid to do what is in her nature; to fly.

The white bird yearns for freedom; yet she stays because the cage of her mind prevents her from flying, not the real cage. She will die when the coming dark storm engulfs her little cage. She will be too old and too weak to fight for her life by then.

You can trade the tyranny of guns for the tyranny of God but you're still living in a cage. This bird does not realize that the door to her cage is open and she holds the key to freedom locked tightly in her mind.

Are you Qualified to Vote?

It is my conviction that voting in a free society is a solemn responsibility. Having the maturity and thoughtfulness that enables you to make a correct voting decision is a high standard that everyone should seek. If you are not able to vote with the utmost of your intelligence, your vote would invalidate the vote of a person who has given due diligence to his choice. More than this, you might be contributing to the election of a charlatan or thief.

Certainly, no one should keep a free citizen from voting. But there are some reasons why you should voluntarily refrain from participating in the vote. These have to do with whether you are able to make the right voting decision, whether you have the intellectual honesty necessary. This has to do with your ability to think through the issues in any election with a proper philosophical orientation that makes a correct voting decision possible. It has to do with whether you are intellectually independent and self-confident enough to be dispassionate about issues that directly affect your life and the lives of your fellow citizens. I have identified four reasons that, if they apply to you, should convince you that you should not vote.

Reason #1. You may not be qualified to vote if you have never held a steady job.

Employed people generally have an interest in a strong economy and want governmental policies and laws that enable both businesses and employees to function well. This is because government has the power to restrict business activity through high taxes, burdensome regulations and government grants. Contrary to the opinion of many, it makes a difference whether a business is free or shackled by government regulations.  If we vote into power people who seek to control rather than liberate, we could be asking for rough times.

What does it mean to “participate in a productive job?” It means living a moral life, using your thinking and skills to create values that other people want to buy. When you take a job, you must develop a sense of discipline in your life; you must build your life around the requirements of working. You must plan your life across a number of years. In short, it means that you accept the responsibility of providing for yourself. This affects your voting decisions and gives you a strong stake in voting for the right people who will help you reach your long-term goals.

If you are enjoying the benefits of having your own income, home and appliances, even a car, you would have an entirely different approach to voting than if you have never taken responsibility for your own support. If a candidate offered programs that dole out money to unproductive people, a person who had never held a steady job might vote differently than a self-sufficient voter. The irresponsible person might vote for a politician who wants to re-distribute wealth from the producers to the non-producers. This would be a moral travesty.

Reason #2. You may not be qualified to vote if you are on government relief

Government relief does an interesting thing to many of those who are its beneficiaries. It often encourages them to be satisfied with having their needs met by government. It establishes the idea in the minds of the beneficiaries that it is the duty of all other citizens to provide for their well being. Certainly, government does a lot to create this illusion and that is because it wants the votes of those beneficiaries. Although some people believe this idea is unquestionable, I think most people know that getting something that you haven't earned is immoral. Further, this premise encourages the growth of government and is antithetical to the principles of a free society.

A social progressive would disagree with me about whether you should vote because his/her political ideal is a society where the more able will provide the funds to support the less able. The people who would benefit from welfare programs are the very people from whom the social progressive would seek support. In my view, this is precisely why the person getting government relief is not qualified to vote. What gives any person the right to demand that another person should be forced to supply his support?  His vote to receive government support invalidates the vote of the person who has lived his life earning his keep.

If you advocate such force, what is the difference between you and a thief? Doesn't the thief think he is justified in taking someone’s money? Does not the thief think that people are "suckers" who do not deserve the money he steals from them? Morally, there is no difference between a thief and an advocate of income redistribution. Both forms of redistribution are a violation of the right to the pursuit of happiness. And the productive person has to work harder because his time and energy have been expropriated (it takes time and energy to make money)…while the person who receives the money will generally squander it.

Money earned by the productive individual would not exist were it not for the choice (to work). And since the person who receives the money from government as a beneficiary did not choose to work, that fact makes the redistribution of money a crime. No point of altruism, no exploitation theory and no right can be mustered that gives anyone the right to take something from one person and give it to another. One thing is certain: the best way to ensure that production stops and society descends into group warfare is to make living impossible for the talented and educated.  If you want to understand why our economy is in the dumps, this is the reason: there is too much redistribution going on.

Progressives never say they want to stop production or punish success. But their policies are not only immoral (as is theft) but impractical. You cannot expect the victim to continue to allow theft of his property. Eventually, he will tire of working hard for others when he realizes that the entire social welfare scheme is a fraud and a lie. He may join the Tea Parties. In other cases, he will do what is his right and protect his property against the marauders of government by being less productive until the marauders are removed from power.

Whether redistribution takes place through volunteerism/work camps (which is a scheme for stealing the energy of people – a form of concentration camps), higher taxes (which is overt theft of the property of the able), the Fairness Doctrine (which is a way of destroying freedom of speech and stealing from people their right to think), to Foreign Policy (which is a plan to loot the American economy for the sake of the developing world) to providing grants to local community organizers such as ACORN (which is an effort to loot the treasury by community organizers and corrupt real estate developers – See Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and Valerie Jarrett), you can be sure that there will be no end to the looting and no end to the propaganda that promotes sacrifice. You can be sure that it won’t be long before we are totally bankrupt.

As Ayn Rand says, “It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's service, there's someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master.”[1]

Reason #3. You may not be qualified to vote if you are in college or a college graduate.

You may not be qualified to vote if you have been influenced heavily by the prevailing philosophies taught in our nation’s colleges and universities. Higher education today is supposed to be an open forum for ideas. Its goal at one time (a very long time ago) was to teach the student to think critically, to be open to new ideas and learn how to evaluate ideas in an unbiased manner. This is not the goal today. If you went to college to get a good education, you have been cheated. Let’s look at some of the influences.

Hume/Kant Axis

David Hume and Immanuel Kant are two philosophers who have had devastating influence on the ability of our young people to think. Their ideas have poisoned the inductive process and have turned thinking and philosophical inquiry into an undertaking that rejects virtually every valid concept known to man. Concepts such as reason, truth and knowledge have been turned into their opposites and the result has been the establishment of a secular nihilist foundation upon which virtually any anti-man concept can be built.

You may think that ideas do not matter; that action is more important than thought and that it is useless to spend time on subjects like philosophy because, you think, they have no application to life. That point of view is exactly the point of view of David Hume. In denying the value of philosophy, you have accepted Hume’s philosophy.

The key question regarding Hume and Kant's influence is that their ideas amount, in practice, a destruction of your ability to evaluate reality. These philosophies leave you without a method for understanding reality. They leave you to depend only upon your emotions when making moral decisions...including political decisions. And because pragmatism defaults to altruism, all political decisions are based on socialist and progressive schemes of government that enslave you to the collective. Literally, the entire Hume/Kant culture is mired in altruism to such an extent that many people have no problem using government coercion to attack a myriad of “social” problems. If you accept this blindness, you are not qualified to vote.

Marx/Rousseau Axis

Jean Jacques Rousseau was a philosopher who coined the term “social contract.” This view of government essentially justified majority rule, democracy, where the minority was charged with accepting any laws or restrictions that the majority decided to impose. Rousseau founded his preferred government upon the idea that there was an implicit contract to accept majority rule. He also held that the will of the majority was somehow infallible and must be accepted as opposed to mere self-interest. Rousseau is very popular among progressives today because his ideas justify forcing the minority (that is often rich and ripe for exploitation) to accept high taxes and expropriation by the government. As the Obama administration is eager to tell us: "We won."

Karl Marx is the champion of communism and socialism. Through his development of a mystical “historical process,” Marx invented a political philosophy that was attractive to many who hoped for the legalized nationalization and looting of the products, machines and factories created by capitalists.  They thought they could expropriate the machines and factories from the owners and still retain production and wealth.  It was a fool's errand; the exact opposite happened; production was always destroyed.

Marx’s critique of capitalism is considered by many to be accurate. However, it is based on a faulty view of both humanity and the workings of the market system. Marxists are determinists who think that men are molded by the economic class and that the market system is a zero/sum game that always involves someone winning and someone losing.  Yet, capitalism is based on the idea that man, when he engages in free trade uses his reasoning capacity and his ability to choose moral action. On the other hand, Marx thought that capitalists were vicious predators seeking to exploit the workers when in fact they were traders who significantly benefited the lives of those who bought their products.  Capitalist trade is not a zero/sum game but a win/win as well as a constantly improving system that helped people live better and longer lives.

Today, Marxist ideas are taught with little debate and they infest our students with the idea that capitalism is full of evil exploiters and that America is an imperialist country. If you are a Marxist, you are not qualified to vote...pure and simple. This includes many people in the Obama administration who now have the power to run (ruin) capitalism.

The current economic crisis (September 2008) is an excellent example of how Marxist socialism is a failed system. Contrary to the advocates of dictatorship, this crisis is a failure of socialism, not capitalism. The basic principle of socialism, according to Karl Marx is from each according to his ability to each according to his need; and the Community Reinvestment act fostered by Bill Clinton required that banks issue risky loans to people who did not quality for them.  This was a form of redistribution of the money of the banks to the crooks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac who were all Democratic Party operatives.  Even Barack Obama was involved.  

Reason #4.  You are not qualified to vote if you still think that Barack Obama can make things better. 

Obama is a nihilist whose only goal is to destroy this nation.  He cannot help himself because he was raised by a communist mother, influenced by a communist father and mentored by communists and terrorists all his life.  Consider: failed stimulus programs, failed jobs policies, failed foreign policy, failed monetary policy, failed oil policy, failed tax policy, failed educational policy, failed green energy policy and his constant calls for Americans to sacrifice.  If you have not done the study necessary to know how and why all of these policies are failing, if you have not learned that a nation cannot indefinitely spend more money than it takes in...and know why it is wrong to engage in deficit spending...then you have no idea how to be a citizen and you should not vote.  Leave the voting to the adults and you'll be much better off and you'll feel a lot better about it.

Conclusion

Of course, ours is an age of skepticism and all concepts including freedom and individual rights are under attack by people who don’t hold any principles: the progresive left and right. The conceptual corruption created by skeptics and mystics in our society has made discussion about a proper society into a naïve activity. If people argue that the principle of property rights should be inviolable, many will shrug as if the rights advocate is stupid to think in such a pedestrian way. Social planners are busy trying to decide how best to allocate other peoples’ money for the sake of social goals while society plunges deeper into the depths.  People on the dole accept the money given to them by the government and in return they buy into the socialist myth that such redistribution is good for the economy.  As they see things getting worse, they don't even know that their very own parasitism is causing it.

How did we turn our nation over to these simplistic morons who don't even know that individual rights are the only means to a just society? They think they are too smart, and too hip, to care that we have lost the fundamental basis of proper society and they think that anyone who disagrees with them is stupid or seeking to help the rich.

But I don't want you to refrain from voting.  I would prefer you educate yourself about the issues and stop listening to the talking heads who only confuse you.  Open a book and get all sides on the issues, especially the issues about which the media is not telling you.  There is plenty of alternative media out there.  The truth is out there and it is not just about Democrat vs. Republican.  It is really about right and wrong and it takes effort to learn how to think so that you can make an informed choice.

When the leaders and intellectuals in a society are corrupted by skepticism, one cannot blame the people for not knowing better. How could the average person know what makes up a proper society when his teachers don’t explain to them what is a proper society?  When sacrifice is the guiding principle and when most people think that plunder is the only practical way to run a society, can you blame people for voting for the most consistent and corrupt graduates of our universities? It has happened before that the people have taken things into their own hands when they felt it was necessary.  Yet, I fear that we are probably going to have another "fixed" election; fixed by the universities.

Yet, it is the job of the intellectuals and philosophers to properly educate the people and today’s crop has failed miserably – otherwise we would not be arguing about absurd notions like income re-distribution and media bias.  We would not be thinking that we can spend our way into prosperity or that robbing Peter to pay Paul is actually going to be ok with Peter.

A careful reading of the Constitution will give you a better understanding of what the Founders intended when they established our country. They sought, fundamentally, to restrict government and avoid tyranny. In practice it meant that every citizen was free to think, speak and act as he saw fit – without the possibility of influence from the government. The sum of man's rights is what we call individual rights. Properly, the government cannot violate the rights enumerated in the Constitution. The government's only mandate is to protect individuals from having their rights violated by anyone including the government. This idea has created what was once the most politically free society in the history of the world - with the consequence that it is also the most affluent society in the history of the world. When people are free to make their own decisions about their lives and property they most often make the correct decisions and the result is a society where people are safe, trusted and successful.

We owe it to ourselves to ensure that we do not make a “light” or “frivolous” decision when we vote for important offices. The people who created our society and set its foundations studied philosophy, politics and world history for many years; they debated political and philosophical issues for hours and even fought against a deadly British army for the right to live free of government coercion. It is incumbent on any American of voting age to ensure that he/she has the correct intellectual foundation that is necessary for making a rational choice about the people who will hold power in our country. If you have not made that effort to understand the issues, you should not vote. If you think that theft can be made moral by pulling a lever behind some curtains, you should not vote.

[1] The Soul of the Collectivist, For the New Intellectual, Ayn Rand

Richard Behney for Senate

I think that a viable political strategy for 2010 is, at the very least, to do what we can to gridlock the next Congress. Elect out as many of the candidates we can in each local area and make sure that no one party dominates on the Hill. Elect in alternative candidates where those candidates are consistently free market and individual rights advocates, especially those that came out of the Tea Parties. On a national level, Tea Partiers, who we know number in the millions, should donate money to the campaigns of a few "Tea Party Candidates" for Congress and Senate so they have the ability to make strong challenges to the incumbents. I urge all Tea Party protesters all over the country to donate to Richard Behney's Senate run in Indiana against Evan Bayh. This can be a highly visible campaign, covered by the media and especially Fox News, that would set the basis for the formation of a third party going forward. There is still a lot of education that needs to take place and this national support of a Tea Party candidate during this election cycle could help in that effort.

I am re-printing this email that I received from Richard Behney for Senate Headquarters. I urge you to help in any way you can...if only it means forwarding this to everyone you know. I've met Richard and I believe he would be an outstanding Senator from Indiana. Anyone who reads this from the media, please help get the word out that a Tea Party leader is taking on the establishment. You can contact him through his website.

"I am Richard Behney, Founder of the Indianapolis Tea Party and Republican Candidate for the United States Senate challenging Blue-Dog Democrat, Evan Bayh. Many from our Hoosier Tea Parties and 9.12 groups asked me to step forward to take our voice inside the Capitol. I’ve accepted the challenge, and am willing to stand in the gap. Now its up to you!

You need to understand, the GOP does not support this campaign financially. In fact, they actually work towards silencing our grassroots voice (look no further than NY-23 for evidence of that). Let me be straight with you…this fight will not continue unless YOU, the Tea Partiers, 9.12ers, and other freedom-loving Americans, are prepared to step up now and put your money where your passion is.

This is DO or DIE.

Consider this an urgent CALL TO LIBERTY – we must raise funds for our campaign to continue. Beginning now through December 16th, the anniversary of the original Boston Tea Party, we must raise $100,000 to sustain this campaign or forfeit our voice.

I urge you to go to www.richardbehney.com to make your $20, $50, $100 or more donation today! You and I both know our individual rights and liberties are worth far more than $20, $50, or $100. They are priceless.

Your donation will make a difference.

FREEDOM!

Richard Behney"

Why Obama will Fail

If the sight of a starving child makes you angry; if you want to do away with poverty and create a better, fairer, more affluent society; you must think long and hard. You must do a serious, dispassionate study of history, as I have done. Like me, you must study economics, logic, philosophy and the principles of a Constitutional Republic. You must read the Founding Fathers and learn how they thought and why. And you must learn about the people responsible for poverty and how they get away with it; how they exploit people and steal their life blood; you must learn about the history of dictatorship, fascism, communism, radical leftists in America and how they hope to bring European communism (dictatorship) to the world. Then if you have done a proper job of learning, you will conclude, as I have done, that the best and only way to solve the problem of poverty is to establish full unregulated capitalism. You must protest the atrocities fostered by progressivism. You must fight for Liberty.

The progressives in the Obama administration claim to be part of an honorable tradition in American politics. Unlike their political enemies, they claim to represent a more enlightened philosophy, one that wants to make things better for Americans. They see economic injustice and want to fix it; they want to make capitalism more inclusive and fair. Yet, during their long history, American progressives have had associations with eugenics, socialism, communism, the labor movement and even fascism.

The reason for these associations is simple. Progressives agree, in principle, with the premises of these philosophies. They grew up together. Although today there are some “honest” liberals who still adhere to Constitutional protections, such as the right of a woman to her body, there is one basic premise that all progressives of all varieties agree upon; and it is this premise that makes them all wrong.

This premise is the need of progressives to use coercion to re-distribute wealth. This is true of every progressive scheme.

1. What does it mean in practice to re-distribute wealth and
2. Whose rights are violated in order for progressive schemes to work?

Few people realize that progressive interference with capitalism always causes unintended consequences that are often worse than the intended benefits of wealth re-distribution. Let’s give a couple of examples.

Let’s assume that the government imposes a tax on your small business skating rink. The government makes a case that people who skate have more broken ankles and make a stronger demand on hospitals. So in order to help hospitals take care of broken ankles it imposes a tax of 10% on people who go to your skating rink. For you this requires that you raise your prices by 10% to cover the tax. In order to ensure that they eat as well as they have eaten in the past, your customers decide to go to the skating rink less often. This also means that you, the business owner, must now pay employees to collect the tax and remit the money to the government while also dealing with the loss of skaters. You may go out of business or reduce the number of employees that you can afford to hire.

Or let’s assume that the government thinks an industry might have some characters who are harming consumers and in order to correct that behavior it imposes regulations and reporting procedures that your business has to provide to the government. Not only could you be jailed for not complying with the reporting requirements but you could also be fined or jailed if the government determines that you have cheated the consumer in some way. First of all, you have to live with the possibility that the reporting you do to the government might be misinterpreted in some way or that the government official who evaluates your reports might be in the pay of your competitor and that he will find something that he can interpret as being wrong. You might, in order to stay in business, have to pay a bribe and go to jail if your payoff is discovered. Because of the regulations imposed on you, it becomes difficult to do business honestly which defeats the supposed purpose of the regulation.

Then you also have to hire additional people to fill out forms and reports for the government, auditors to look at everything you do to determine if you are doing something wrong that should be corrected. These new employees add to your overhead costs and require that you cut other productive employees in order to pay these employees who don’t help you serve the consumer. So your ability to serve the consumer, the very reason for the reporting requirements, may be hurt. This might cause you to lose customers to your larger competitor who can afford to fulfill the compliance requirements. If you are a small business, you may not be able to stay in business with these new costs. In fact, this was the result of the Sarbannes Oxley Act signed into law by the Bush administration.

You could write a book chronicling every government intervention into the economy and the damage done by each of them and you would still not convince a progressive that government intervention never improves things. You would not even be able to convince a majority of CEOs of major corporations of the same thing. Yet it is their rights as well as the rights of every individual in our society that are violated by these intrusions. More than this their lives are damaged as well.

Ayn Rand wrote: “The only proper, moral purpose of a government is to protect man's rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence—to protect his right to his own life, to his own liberty, to his own property and to the pursuit of his own happiness. Without property rights, no other rights are possible.”

You would have thought that sooner or later an honest person would have entered the political fray to declare that progressivism is a fraud. You might have even thought that somewhere along the line even a progressive with enough standing in his movement would have recognized that progressivism accomplishes the opposite of its stated goals. But no one has. In the country where free speech still exists, no one has been able to articulate the truth that progressivism is false. Instead progressives continue to cling to a litany of false premises without challenge. How have they advanced their views? They explicitly hold to the following false tenets:

1. Capitalism is theft. This lie has been refuted by many economists. It is based on the labor theory of value which is the idea that the value of a product is dependent only upon the amount of labor expended in creating it (this justifies the coercive protection that the Obama administration extends to SEIU and other labor unions). We now know that there are a variety of other factors that determine the value of any given product, not the least of which is the value placed upon it by the purchaser and the amount of money he is willing to pay for it...regardless of the amount of labor expended on it. We also know that being a capitalist is not exploitation; that it takes tremendous skill and ability to conceive, create and manage a highly productive business…it also takes the genius of those leaders who are able to forge new industries and create massive wealth-producing organizations that benefit consumers and laborers. You have to ask yourself about the low level of knowledge in the administration about sound economic principles or even about history.
2. Capitalism is evil. In order to displace capitalism the progressives use propaganda based on the labor theory of value to assert that capitalists maliciously steal the labor of workers. This view is stolen straight from religion; it was the religions of the world that held this world and anything done in it by selfish profit-seekers to be evil. This included rich people such as merchants, jewelers, bankers, ship owners and anyone who lived to make a profit. Yes, progressives got their main ideas from 2000 years ago.
3. Capitalism is flawed and creates bubbles and distortions. A careful analysis of history shows that it is not capitalism that is responsible for economic depressions but government intervention. In fact, capitalism is nothing more than freely chosen transactions engaged in by people for the sake of their self-interest. These kinds of transactions cannot cause economic downturns because they are mutually beneficial. The only factors that can cause bubbles and other economic distortions are massive interferences in the economy by government.
4. Incrementalism is the progressive tactic of introducing minor changes in the economy when there is not enough political support for major changes. The purpose of incrementalism is to establish the precedent that government has the right to interfere in peoples’ lives and to lay the groundwork for the later expansion of those interferences.
5. The idea that you can improve conditions for “victims” of capitalism establishes a constituency of dependents upon government that will vote for government coercion. The idea that this is the will of the people violates the basis of a Constitutional Republic and establishes the contradiction that enables progressives to wedge their way into social control and totalitarianism.
6. Progressives are perennial liars simply because they must hide from people the nature of what they are doing. In fact, their world is made up of meaningless words, phony images, manipulation of opinion and the idea that perception is reality. They skim over reality like a well-thrown rock skimming over water. They ignore questions like: What justifies taking the money of one person and giving it to another? Is using government to “solve” social problems the constitutional thing to do? What happens to the people whose dollars are taken away? How does that affect their standard of living and is it right for them to suffer so that others may enjoy the luxury of not caring for themselves? Are there better non-coercive ways for people to solve their so-called "social" problems? What gives the government the right to confiscate the hard earned money of citizens? What about all the waste and corruption? How are lost funds going to be recovered and why is no one making an effort to recover them? In order to avoid such questions, progressives just ignore them and talk about the non-existent benefits of their economic manipulations.
7. Progressives lie that the USA is an Imperialist nation. This lie confuses the need of America to defend itself against dictators and other thugs around the world. The truth is that most examples of American “imperialism” are nothing more than a free country defending itself and its economic interests against thugs and robbers. Although some of our Presidents had imperialist policies, by and large, the history of our nation has been decidedly anti-imperialist. We have fought more empires than we have been accused of creating.
8. Progressives portray themselves as “good” stewards of government while their opposition is denigrated as evil and deserving of hatred and ridicule. They offer no reason for this view except that they represent the philosophy of sacrifice which is considered by them to be the most practical way to get things done – and the most moral. In keeping with the view of one of their leaders, they do what they can with what they have and wrap it in moral garments. They take it upon themselves to represent supposed victims in order to acquire the allegiance of those victims and defeat their political opposition. It is a shell game.
9. Sound economic principles are ignored by progressives and this opens the door for corruption and theft, oligarchy and fascism, slush funds and re-distribution, all of which accomplish the opposite of progressive promises. The good cannot be advanced by forcing people to sacrifice.

For decades progressives have been promising to fix problems supposedly created by capitalism. Yet, with all the talk about economics, with all the verbiage about this theory and that, the liberals have not explained the basic economic principles that drive their policies and recommended programs. They have never felt the need to tell us why force imposed on innocent civilians is good for the economy. This is because they have written the history books and whitewashed their own complicity in the destruction of the last century. To hide the fact that they caused most of the problems of this century, they blame capitalism.

What is missing in the arguments of the progressives? What is their basic principle that they never discuss? The progressives’ basic principle is the idea that the government has the duty and the right to coerce people. For progressives – all of them – there is no debate about the idea that progressivism is coercive; that it violates the principles of the Constitution. This principle is never debated because the progressives don’t want us to know that coercion is not just their method of operating, it is the goal of their movement.

How do they get away with this? Many of the progressives have grown up on the idea that all they want is to help people. Many well-meaning people actually believe this. They lose the connection between stated intentions to do good and the reality that coercion never accomplishes good. They use emotive language to talk about how people need to be helped, how the poor are innocent victims of greedy people, how it is good to help our neighbors and how love of humanity is their only motivation. With tears in their eyes, they proclaim freedom for the exploited...while they implement coercive programs that significantly add to the costs of doing business, add to the cost of living and destroy these innocent victims that they claim to represent (when you see the dirty face of a starving child, you can thank a progressive). Then, in an even more tearful scream to the world, they blame capitalism for the destruction that they have brought about. Yet it is capitalism (you and me) that has created more beneficial products, created more employment and done more good in the world than all the progressives put together.

Indeed, the so-called great liberal economists and regulators of the Obama administration continue to talk about an economy as if it were a gadget, a machine that must be primed (inflation) and pumped (taxes) and oiled and fueled (gas) and moved (automobiles), to such an extent that they have failed to mention or realize that the machine is made up of parts--living human parts that suffer whenever an "adjustment" is made to their economic activities. We are feeling this now more than ever. Ask these regulators where their Constitutional authority resides and they will blink and bluster that they represent the will of the people; they won the last election; this gives them the authority to do what they want. Their blindness on this issue has led them to complaining about unemployment but advocating policies that have and will create more unemployment. They claim to represent the “public good” while they create no good. They claim that things will get better if they are allowed to “tweak” capitalism in favor of the victims of capitalism while such tweaks create less economic activity. They blame capitalism in the midst of the oligarchy and fascism they have created. They smile and proclaim a love for the downtrodden, blame Bush for all the problems they caused, then get into limousines that take them to jets purchased by our tax dollars, so they can tell us how they intend to plan our society as if the money they spend is theirs not ours.

In order to have a productive society you need producers. In order to have production you need freedom and property rights. In order to have a civil society you need a government that defends freedom and property rights. Today, the progressives do nothing productive, attack freedom and property rights and impose regulations and laws that restrict economic activity while they claim that their “planning” of our society is a reflection of their yet-to-be-demonstrated intelligence, education and astute abilities; the result of which has been chaos and decline.

Government planning means planning lives, and no life is productive which has no individual incentive. Consider what it means for our future that people who got famous protesting in the streets and universities against capitalism are now in charge of the most productive (capitalist) society in history.

What is the basic contradiction in the Obama administration? What do we need to say to them that will clearly state what they are doing wrong? They need to understand that it is man's basic nature as a rational being that makes economic planning impossible. It is man's ability to be moral (by making the right decisions for his individual life) that they are attacking. No planner can replace his own thinking for the thinking of millions of people as they make hundreds of thousands of decisions every day.

The apathy many people feel about government today comes from government taking an increasingly commanding role in peoples' lives through so-called stimulus programs, deficit spending, health care programs, cap and trade programs, card check and the various other programs that the progressives are forcing down our throats. Don't blame that apathy on people or capitalism; blame it on the Obama administration. If you must blame it on greed, blame it on the greed of progressives who want to control your work, your income and your life.

To the President, I would say that you can't just smile at people and say things are getting better when the people know better. You can't ask small businesses to hire people and plan for the future while you are in the process of brazenly and openly destroying that future. You can't fool the people. Wishing doesn't make it so, Mr. President. Yours is the most immoral administration in history because you are making it impossible for people to make moral decisions.

Mr. Obama, we did not elect you to violate the Constitution; you took the same oath to protect it as past leaders did. You are not doing your job. You are destroying our country. You have looted it under a call to sacrifice...and now you have the audacity to ask for more sacrifice. You even have the audacity to ask for cooperation from us while you do what your radical friends want. Stop smiling, Mr. President because we are not. We want to live while you are killing us.

Government planning does not mean a benevolent judgment based upon the sophisticated opinion of highly skilled economists. It means a gun that backs up a law, regulation, or economic adjustment with which the American citizen will have to comply whether he likes it or not. It was an American who said, "Give me Liberty of give me death." It is time for a modern American to say, "Give me Liberty or you’ll soon be out of a job."

I See

I look
and I see death.

I see leaders scheming,
I see gangsters stealing,
I see liars lying,
I see people marching,
I see people running,
I see young men dying,
I see bodies broken,
I see mothers mourning,
I see children starving,
I see huge tanks rolling,
I see teargas spreading,
I see terror growing,
I see teardrops falling.

And my task is to make sense.

Copyright 2009 Robert Villegas, Jr.

The Cause of War

This is a revised and expanded version of a previous post entitled "The 'Inevitable' Victory of Socialism".

There has never been a time for us living today when war was not a constant threat. Today we may be ending one war while we are in the throes of another in Afghanistan that may take years to win. I’m not sure that our President has the desire or the resolve needed to win this war. I'm thinking, if you don't know what to do, Mr. President, let's bring them home so we can prepare for the defensive war ahead.

The cause of these two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) is not the United States but dictatorship. In Iraq, we had a dictatorship that openly sought to weaken the USA. Saddam supported terrorists and financed attacks against Israel. He lied to the world and started several wars in his region. He was taken out by the freest country in the world. Yet, we were wrong, says the left, when we sought to depose Saddam.

In Afghanistan, we are fighting a brutal gang known as the Taliban; a group that gave refuge to Al Queda and Osama bin Ladin. The Taliban refused to help the United States bring these terrorists to justice so they were removed by the militaries of freer nations. This is a just war, we are told by the left (today), because we are trying to kill bin Ladin. Today, the Taliban continue their fight as they vie to restore their brutal domination over the country. Killing bin Ladin doesn't seem to be on the table.

It is difficult for us to recognize the most common cause of war. My view is that wars are started by authoritarian governments over weaker or freer countries. And since most of these governments are at constant war with capitalism, you can be sure that they are not friends of individual rights. This means they have an incentive to denigrate and “go after” other countries rich in natural resources. As Ludwig von Mises puts it:

“Durable peace is only possible under perfect capitalism, hitherto never and nowhere completely tried or achieved. In such a Jeffersonian world of unhampered market economy the scope of government activities is limited to the protection of the lives, health, and property of individuals against violent or fraudulent aggression. The laws, the administration, and the courts treat natives and foreigners alike. No international conflicts can arise: there are no economic causes of war.”[1]

Yet, the representatives of authoritarian governments gain credibility when they posture as defenders of peace while criticizing the United States as a warlike nation. It is a common scam that has been run by countless dictators from the Soviets to the Taliban. It is based on the Marxist lie that capitalism is about stealing the labor and resources of people in order to make the “evil” profit. Yet, as Mises explains, there has never been a fully capitalist system; any examples that they denigrate are mixed economies (or worse) where the governments have driven the the country into poverty through massive interventions; governments very much like those advocated by the critics of capitalism. Their scam is to blame the United States for being a war monger which justifies their making war against the United States without having to actually declare war.

The question is: why were most of the wars of the last two centuries started by dictatorships or authoritarian governments? The best way to understand this is by analyzing the types of governments that start wars.

For instance, why would a country that has open trade with the world want to go to war? As long as free markets prevail there is every incentive for peace. And as Mises points out, free market governments are limited to protecting the lives and properties of all citizens. By design, they have a respect for freedom and free peoples; likewise for the citizens of other countries. Free people want to make profits so they can live well. They are creative and “life-serving” by nature because they know that they must provide benefits and improvements to people in the form of products and services. They can’t make a profit if their customers and suppliers are dead or in chains.

On the other hand, a government that keeps a cold hand on the activities of its citizens, that wants to muscle in on the profits of businesses, will find every reason to restrict free trade and dishonor other countries. One such type of government is called an oligarchy where rich families use the government to control major industries and restrict free competition. This is called “muscling in” on markets and is not a hallmark of capitalism but of dictatorships. These governments covet other resource-rich territories because they want to monopolize those resources and charge prices above the level of the free market. If they can corner the markets for such resources as oil, minerals, diamonds, etc., they can charge exorbitant prices and make millions. They instigate wars so they can add these countries to their control. Such oligarchs divide the country into two factions: 1) their friends and 2) the impoverished and neglected masses who have no choice but to buy their necessities from them. Within their countries, they fight a constant war against the citizens; and outside their countries, they fight wars against other country’s citizens...in the name of peace.

What about our policies? How will they impact our future actions regarding other nations? For instance, our government has violated the terms of NAFTA for the sake of union drivers. It has raised certain tariffs as a way of "protecting" American workers and, most worrisome of all, it has created massive budget deficits that threaten to weaken the dollar around the world. This move has brought about the threat of higher prices due to the Fed's increasing of the money supply (inflation). This massive expansion, that takes money right out of the pockets of productive citizens, is intended to enable the government to takeover large banks and manufacturing firms, create non-productive jobs, strengthen control over the people through Health Care and Cap and Trade as well as make other political payoffs to unions and political cronies. Of course, we mustn't forget another big killer of trade which is the expansion of union memberships advocated by President Obama and SEIU among others. This policy will most assuredly result in lower product quality, higher product prices and loss of productive jobs. All of these moves will create an oligarchy in our country made up of people like George Soros, friends of Barack Obama, other leftists and companies that either willingly participate in "muscling in" or are forced to participate out of fear of Obama's pitchforks. The result will be impoverished masses (you and I) and very possibly a warlike nation with diminishing economic power?

Understanding the cause of wars today is difficult because of the influence of Marxism. This philosophy seeks to mask the desire for plunder among many countries by claiming to fight for the supposed “victims” of capitalism. Using doublespeak and the Big Lie, they convince people that capitalist production is theft. American college professors are routinely teaching college students from around the world that wars are caused by capitalism and specifically by America. Routinely, they tell us that capitalist countries have a penchant for captured markets and resource theft. It is typical of the left to accuse the opposition of doing the very things the left is doing.

How do they get away with teaching these lies? Early Marxists created the perfect scam to convince people that there was indeed something evil about capitalism. It is called the dialectical process or dialectical materialism which was a mystical assertion that capitalism was the thesis that was being replaced by the antithesis which is socialism. A historical struggle was falsely postulated and by selective analysis, the Marxists claimed to “prove” that capitalism was doomed to destruction at the hands of the “workers of the world.” This idea of an inevitable historical process that would cause the replacement of capitalism by socialism was not to be doubted, they told us, and, they claim, there is no reason to fight it; instead we should hurry the process along. This is how progressives today convince people that they have no choice about the coming socialism. Educate the people about the inevitability of socialism and you destroy opposition to it.

In fact, the "change" that Obama promises, according to this theory, is the road to the next step of the dialectical process. Change is the new term that will usher in the socialist antithesis to capitalism.

Over the last several decades, however, something seems to have gone wrong with the dialectical process. For some reason, socialism has not yet replaced capitalism. History has stopped being inevitable. Since the big war, Marxists such as Herbert Marcuse and others have been frustrated that the dialectical process did not work as they had thought. To explain this failure, they assert that "reactionary" forces, strengthened by the economic power of the capitalist countries, have tempted the masses away from communism. Their diabolical method of temptation was to give the people products and services that improved their lives...created by mass production and mass marketing (This is why the Marxists (environmentalists and others) are always trying to stop industrial progress and why they hate Madison Avenue). Further, they claim, the capitalist military industrial complex has built massive weapons that have kept the socialist axis at bay. In their view, only something as evil and powerful as capitalism could thwart the efforts of the “good” people (murderous dictators) seeking to stop the dastardly exploitation of the workers.

For the Marxists, the reason that socialism could not advance was the power of capitalism; which is strange since they had thought it would collapse of its own weight. This new circumstance of a powerful, diabolical capitalism has precipitated their efforts to cause it to collapse by stressing it with socialist programs, false charges of Imperialism, reduced military expenditures, violent street protests, bombings and ginned up scandals. Today, the anti-capitalists have captured the universities, distributed to themselves huge grants from the government treasury and perfected the scam of shaking down business organizations by threatening their self-interest. Those businesses who understand the “opportunity” created by the Marxists are the new oligarchs trying to “muscle in” through their fake government/business partnerships. They forget that Marxist theory has doomed them to destruction along with capitalism.

I think it is curious that the Obama administration never discusses dialectical materialism or even Marx or Hegel, yet it is operating on the basis of Marxism. Implicit in everything they do is the idea that socialism is the next form of government for us...while they tell us that it is not really socialism. These guys came out of Columbia University, for God's sake. What else do you expect?

The problem for the Marxists is that the dialectical process, because it is a false idea accepted without proof of any kind, will still not create a successful socialist state...it will do what it has always done...create an oligarchic dictatorship, economic decline and slavery. It will bring us back to barbarism by destroying the only bulwarks against dictatorship: individual rights and limited government. It will also require wars, as a matter of political survival for the leftists. Every dictatorship must have enemies...but our enemies won't be other dictatorships; they will be the former allies that take a more capitalist road.

There is a spark of hope on the horizon. The Tea Parties may save America because we have the power to stop the advance of socialism...we can make the leftists stop all the spending that would collapse our economy. We can say “No” because our production makes possible the purse from which they rob us of our freedom and dignity. We must insist that they create no more entitlement programs, no more social engineering programs, no more ACORN, SEIU, Americorps, no more lies and hate. The Tea Party protesters are the only people who know that our choices going forward are either socialism or freedom. There is no middle way...not any more.

The best way to stop wars is to re-establish the Constitution and reject Marxism and oligarchy in all their forms.

[1] Ludwig von Mises, “Omnipotent Government” Libertarian Press page 284

President Obama vs. The Pursuit of Happiness

This post is not about “traditional values” although the values we will discuss have been around longer than those we consider to be traditional. I am not going to tell you about the wisdom of the Founding Fathers or why they were right philosophically. I’ve done that elsewhere. This post is about your values, those you pursue and those you create. I will tell you how you can preserve those values today.

In the past, whenever I’ve talked about the evil of sacrifice it was often difficult to explain the real damage done by the idea. The most vicious practitioners of it were dictators who lived decades into the past, people who caused massive wars of destruction. Few people understand the connection between the past and today’s call for sacrifice.

The price tags enacted by re-distribution in the USA today are in the trillions. The argument for sacrifice is being made by Barack Obama through a host of schemes such as Stimulus Packages, entitlement programs, Cap and Trade and Card Check. His speeches are reminiscent of the arguments made in the past by dictators. Today the “evil” profiteers are not Jews and shop keepers in Berlin but American CEOs, investors and small business people. They are said to owe it to the poor that they should give up their production for the “common good”.

An economic value is something that people want and are willing to pay for. These values are created by a company or individual that has expertise and the necessary equipment to make the product or service. Purchase transactions enable us to trade our intelligence and labor (in the form of money) to acquire the intelligence and labor of producers (in the form of products and services).

If you are employed in this economy, the economic values you create are expressions of your individuality. They are a result of your thinking which is your method of survival.

Yet, creating a value requires more than just your mind; it also requires your learning, your competence, your honesty and the ability to act upon your judgment. These values are how you earn your living and how you can afford to enjoy your life. Every value you create is an opportunity to improve your standard of living.

This brings up an important question. Why does the government want your values? More specifically, why is it that whenever you create a value it should be given up by you for “the common good”, why is it that you, who created it, do not have a right to it?

Our political system was originally designed to prevent theft of property. First, the government was charged with fighting criminals and ensuring they were punished for their crimes. Secondly, the Constitution recognized that individual rights were universal principles and it declared your right to the pursuit of happiness. This document especially prohibited the government from acting against you. It charged the government, not with the power to take your values away, but with the power to ensure that they are not taken away...especially by the government.

With the founding of our country, voluntary trade for mutual advantage was the only transfer system. As long as men are free to work and pursue their happiness, this economic system works. In fact, it has provided more abundance, more equality and more happiness than any system in history. Yet, over the last few months our government has been arguing for a different system of transfer; based on the belief that free trade is somehow flawed; in particular, that free trade leaves some people out, steals the labor of other people and keeps those people in a state of poverty. Some have even charged that the system is even racist. This different system is called re-distribution of income. It involves the government taking your values from you by force and giving them to others. It makes the government the violator of the rights that were supposed to be protected by the Constitution. It is legalized theft.

The truth is that no one is left out in a free market system; even the poor are benefited tremendously. Not only is there always the opportunity for education of the poor, but their level of poverty, if you can call it that, is much higher than in countries that restrict free trade. This is not trickle-down; it is, in fact, trickle up. Here’s how it works: In a society of open trade, there are always opportunities for those with low skills to find work. This is because more successful people are always looking for ways to increase their leisure and comfort. They are always looking for people to mow the lawns, clean the gutters, clean the house and cook their meals. The higher the number of wealthy people in a free economy, the more opportunities there are for the poor to gain skills and elevate themselves economically.

In addition, with the drive to lower prices for such things as fast food (an idea invented in the USA), numerous opportunities exist for young people and the poor to develop job skills and eventually move up to more demanding jobs. As long as markets are free, there are always incentives to increase production and lower prices and this means jobs.

Yet, President Obama, as his career indicates, would prefer to create a revolution against capitalism. His system of re-distribution is taking away work opportunities from the poor. In fact, wealth is not created by this process. The very lesson learned from other socialist experiments is that people will not work hard when the fruits of their labor are re-distributed. Isn’t this what killed the Soviet Union? Isn’t this why Hong Kong was a booming city for decades while the rest of China was a labor camp?

When the government insists that you sacrifice your money or your time for the common good, they are asking you to sacrifice both the values that you create as well as the values you want to purchase. These are values that could provide you with a better life and the ability to enjoy it. The government is taking away your better future. And further, they are putting upon you the responsibility of ensuring that other people have a better life than you.

These values that you create are an expression of your love for life and your desire to enjoy life. Why should you have that love cut off? Why should you be thwarted in your effort to live a better life? Who has the moral authority to make a decision about your life, your work, your property and your happiness? Does President Obama? If so, how did he get this right? What made him the “decider” about your ethical decisions? Did you vote him into that position? Is that even a position that should be decided by democratic vote? I think not.

Why is the President attacking your values? Why does he limit and restrict your happiness? I think he wants to destroy your ability to enjoy your life, to ensure that your life is dominated by pain, fear and service to society; he wants to sever the relationship between the values you create and the tangible results of those values; and, more importantly, he wants to paralyze you morally so he can destroy your ability to question his actions.

If you accept the goal of re-distribution, you are already partly brainwashed; you accept President Obama’s vision of a sacrificial life for yourself and for the nation. In this position, you cannot question the administration and any of the re-distribution policies it puts forth. You join the collective and become a dutiful “worker” whose future and well being are in the hands of the government. In order to live a better life, the government must give you more benefits; you do not need to earn them for yourself; you lose the intellectual discipline that comes with self-responsibility. Every economic judgment you make must be a political judgment; a judgment that results in your support for more benefits and entitlements. This means you will vote for President Obama…you might even support his canceling future elections. You might support the persecution of productive people.

Many people who are productive are also silenced by the moral issue that self-sacrifice represents. They’ve been taught to sacrifice since they were children. They are morally paralyzed by the idea that if someone demands their money for others, they must give it up and they must not question the motives of the people who demand it. The speeches given by the President about the “value” of sacrifice and the duty he thinks we have to do it; especially the calls for mandatory public service, are intended, not to promote and sell his policies, but to silence you and gain your support by default. It takes courage to disagree with sacrifice. Who would be so "selfish" as to stand up for his right to happiness?

President Obama does not care about how hard you work or whether you suffer. If you are an American who has prospered in this society, you are guilty because you prospered. You are guilty because, in his mind, you allowed other people to suffer; in fact, he believes you created their suffering. You know better than that; and you also know that your hard work has created opportunities for the poor far beyond that created by President Obama while he worked as a community organizer. Even today, he is less productive as President than you are as a hard working American. He can only take from you because he has the gun. Your power is your mind and your ability to create value.

The fundamental division in our society is between people who hold your view of moral living and people who hold President Obama’s view. Your view is based in honesty, production, hard work and mutual trade to mutual benefit. His view is based on generating envy using discredited materialist views about the evil of profit. Your view is necessary for moral living; his view brings about hatred and theft.

Today people are struggling to be productive as they try to overcome the consequences of President Obama’s policies. Every day he makes your productivity harder. Every day he takes more of your values from you. He is at war against your happiness and every program he passes is another attack on you; another effort to dig you and your children into a deeper hole that that requires more work and no reward. Every dollar the Obama administration spends is a dollar taken from you.

The only way to stop this madness is to fight for your right to happiness without guilt and moral paralysis. You must question to its core every proposal, every move and every policy of the administration. You must start showing up at the offices of your representatives. Every day they should see “the people” tirelessly protesting every measure they pass and every “bribe” they take from the Stimulus Package. The message must be sent out loudly that you will not allow your freedoms to be taken from you without a fight. You must inform them proudly that you will pursue your happiness.

Man-Hating Government Health Care

You don’t have to be an expert on health care to know that government is already a major force in the industry. As a general rule, government always causes more problems than it fixes. Look at history. In fact, all government programs are ineffective by default because they are nothing more than re-distribution schemes. But this coming Health Care Bill has a very specific charge that few others have had. This Bill declares that man is evil by nature.

How can people who think that man is immoral ever solve human problems? Remember that President Obama has repeatedly accused doctors and insurance companies of doing immoral things for the sake of profit…without a shred of evidence. How can he do this? He thinks in the depths of his soul that man is imperfect, immoral and a thief. This is the extent of his value system when it comes to mankind and it exposes why he is leading us into dictatorship and why he is engaging in almost unimaginable and unnecessary spending. He sees it as a foregone conclusion that all men, even educated doctors, are shysters and charlatans who must be controlled by government in order to do the right thing. To his mind, it is time for every man to step up and sacrifice for the sake of others and, one way or the other, he will make sure this happens; at the point of a gun if necessary. Don’t ask him how he knows that man is evil and that human sacrifice is the solution. You won’t get an answer. He’ll only tell you that Jesus preached it and it is one of our traditional values. He won’t tell you that he just feels it; like he felt it when listening to other Marxists in his past.

When businesspeople are free to function they will seek improvements in products or services to increase profits. Yet the President tells us that the pursuit of profit by insurance companies, doctors, drug companies and medical equipment manufacturers has broken the health care system. He believes that people who have no profit at stake (government employees) will do a better job in providing health care services. Yet, we know that a private company is subject to losing customers and must constantly improve in order to keep them.

In fact, profit-seeking is the engine of improved services, products and lives. Free markets increasingly improve outputs and constantly better the lives of customers. In a free market health care economy, every day millions of transactions take place, the goals of which are to save and/or improve lives. Lowering costs and improving services are the methods for these improvements. Each day, thousands of people in free industries come up with ideas on how to improve their respective outputs. New product ideas, new business processes and new cures come about each day because one individual somewhere, multiplied a thousand times, has come up with a better way to do something. All of these new ideas lower costs, increase profits and weed out previous costly practices.

Capitalism is based upon a conviction that individuals are the engine of improvement, that individuals, using reason, can find a better way; and especially that freedom works. The Founding Fathers believed that man is good; that he is capable of reason. This conviction made our society one of the most advanced in history because it left men free to make their own decisions and advance their own lives through production and trade. Affluence was the outcome of freedom. Better health care was also one of those outcomes.

When government takes over an economic process such as health care, the inexorable movement toward improvement is frozen. Progress stops. Any government program, regardless of how many thousands of pages describe it, can only cause stagnation and decline. If you want to innovate in a system run by the government, you must ask the government, apply for a grant and get approval. But who wants to innovate in government when that innovation might lower costs, reduce a bureaucrat's power and reduce government jobs? Who in government wants to put himself out of a job? In government there is every incentive to do things more slowly, less efficiently and in a more costly way. If something is being done efficiently in government, the incentive is to find a less efficient way to do it in order to justify bigger budgets. When the government owns health care, the innovative individual will lose his ability to contribute to better health care services.

The government tells us that we must be realistic about allowing unregulated private industry into such an important area as health care. This viewpoint is the tip off that they are lying to you; that they want to find fault with capitalism in order to create a new re-distribution program. The argument that we must be “realistic” about capitalism’s failings has been used on many other issues to justify government "fixes" that made things worse. This argument obfuscates the fact that government programs violate individual rights – they require coercion against individuals. You can dress it up as some sort of benign service; but it is force and force destroys; the threat of force restricts; and the only result of force against individuals and businesses is more problems for government to blame on capitalism.

In fact, the astute analyst of the administration's economic policies will notice that the administration is "acting in reverse", so to speak. It is systematically, consciously and deliberately attempting to remove from our economy every factor that would solve our economic problems and leaving in place the coercive factors that are responsible for those problems.

When government no longer protects individual rights, incompetent people who cannot function in a free market go into government to vent their hatred of profits and businesspeople. They want to force people to do what they consider is the right thing; which is to sacrifice for others; the result is government programs implemented by force and run by incompetent people. The chief incompetent today is President Obama. He is the leader of this movement to destroy capitalism and freedom. He says he is making things better. He knows he’s just taking over.

Capitalism does not work in health care today because of past government interventions. Programs like Medicare and Medicaid were previous efforts to fix health care. Their costs, restrictions, rationings, rules and compliance procedures have caused a decline in health care services and an increase in costs. This is the problem the government says it is trying to fix. Add to this other onerous regulations that mandate poor business practices for the insurance industry; the efforts by government to under-pay doctors (in Medicare and Medicaid) and you have a situation where there are too many patients and not enough doctors.

Private insurance companies are in the cross hairs of the administration and the Democrats. This is because private insurance companies make profits. And they typically pay more from premiums than do government programs. Many hospitals would not be able to stay open were it not for these insurance company payments. The comparison with government inefficiency and rationing is too stark; insurance companies, as shackled and controlled as they are, keep doing a better job than government. This is why you hear in polls that most people are happy with their private insurance programs and why you hear the government criticizing the profits made by them. If they can convince you that those profits are evil, then they can drive the insurance companies out of business through the Public Option.

For the President, profits are the problem. This idea drives him and the Democrats on this issue and it moves them to cripple and then take over the companies responsible for health care services. This is the intent of the Health Care Bill; to cripple health care so it can be taken over.

An economy like ours is not just a bunch of levers that can be manipulated at will. If you try to impact one element of the economy by pulling one lever, you increase pressure somewhere else and that might cause the entire economy to collapse. Look at the sub-prime crisis for an example where government tried to manage one element, home ownership, by demanding that banks increase loans to poor people. This almost destroyed our economy because another element, the need to qualify loan applicants, was ignored. The result was huge losses of capital in the financial services industry. Re-distribution was the goal here, and sadly, it happened on a massive scale thanks to Bush, Obama and their friends.

What lever is the government pulling on health care? It is the complaint that costs are too high. This is the same lever it tried to pull with Medicare and Medicaid before; yet costs are still too high. We are missing the proverbial forest for the trees here. The solution is not to artifically drive costs down through massive infusions of tax payer money and increased regulation of the industry; that is a short-sighted view. Pulling that lever through government would only cause an increase of patients which would still drive aggregate costs up and threaten the system even more.

Another clue to the government's perverse thinking here is to recognize that if there were enough profits in health care, no one would be complaining about a broken system. Everything would be humming along just fine and health care would keep improving. The real solution to the health care problem is to get the government out of health care; to stop its incessant pulling of levers. We must provide the incentive for millions of people, industry wide, to reduce costs. That incentive is the profit motive. Only the profit motive can reduce costs and allow for the innovation that will increase profits. This new Health Care Program is not a fix; it is a smashing of the system, the destruction of it. President Obama has created a man-hating government health care bill...the result will be more people dieing younger.

Government programs have decimated the medical professions and hospitals for decades. Private insurance companies, to a large degree, have been good for doctors and hospitals, because they do not under-pay to the extent that government does. Government sees the destruction of the private insurance industry as a way to take over those payments made by private companies and transfer them to the government. They plan to use these profits to pay for the massive costs of the government program. But, metaphorically speaking, they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg; these profits that the government is expropriating from the insurance companies are not going to be realized. They will just go away along with the benefits and options they offered to patients. Likewise with Medicare Advantage policies; these private programs have improved medical services for seniors and given them valuable options not available through Medicare. When the government puts Medicare Advantage out of business, as it intends to do, the savings and benefits to seniors will go away. Remember, government does not create values. Because it is an agency of force, it can only prevent or destroy them. Whenever it tries to re-distribute values, the source of those values dries up.

Let's look at how the whole industry will be impacted by this bill. With health care, the drying up of the industry would happen at every level.

• First, doctors will not want to work if their practices cost more to operate than revenues will cover. With government constantly reducing payouts, refusing treatments and questioning tests, many doctors will retire early. Also, fewer young people will become doctors if they know that they will have to deal with a government quagmire once they establish practices. This means fewer doctors caring for more patients. Eventually, something will have to be done to lower standards for doctors entering the profession or to increase their pay. In other words, all doctors will work for the government. But no real doctor of ability will work for meager pay; the call to sacrifice will fall flat. Some types will heed the call - charlatans who see an opportunity to make big bucks by taking advantage of gullible patients.
• Pharmaceutical companies will not be able to make profits due to government forcing revenues under margin. They will have less money for research and development and not enough money to ensure the quality of those medicines they make. The government will bail them out to keep them in business...if they support the right candidates.
• Companies making health care equipment will also lose profits due to government rationing and driving down of revenues. This will kill innovation and reduce the quality of the machines and lengthen the time of their use. Those companies that pay homage to the right candidates will be bailed out with tax payer money.
• Hospitals will not be able to keep up with ever decreasing government payouts and will be forced out of business. The government will nationalize all hospitals and install government appointed czars to run them. These czars will be ruthless in demanding cost-cutting measures and will ration care and rooms.
• Finally, the tax payer who sees his taxes jumping through the roof to support all of these struggling businesses will revolt and demand cost-cutting measures and lower taxes. This last will start the cycle of decline all over again making things worse.
• Did you notice the patient in this scenario? I'll let you draw your own conclusions, except to say that his voice will be a whimper. He'll be told, "That's just the way it is. What can you do when you have to deal with government." Get the idea? They want you to die. If your health problems are a drain on the treasury, they want you to die.

There are a number of other issues relating to health care, not the least of which is the portability issue that limits the number of private insurance companies that can compete in a state. This reduces competition, raises prices and harms policy holders. Add to this a number of “mandates” on insurance companies that force them to operate in violation of sound business practices, and you can see that the problem in health care is not the profit motive. The problem is the government.

I might be one of the few people to warn about other coercive practices that are sure to come out of this Health Care Bill. Whenever a bill this large (over 1900 pages) is presented without the people being able to read it; when it is voted upon by elected representatives without even they reading it, you can be sure that many boondoggles and coercive measures have been smuggled into it. Only a charlatan would hide his real intentions in a 1900-page document.

But the real problem is another issue; and the answers to these questions provide the clue to the fact that the government does not care about patients at all, not even high costs. How can government address high costs in health care when it is trying to eliminate profits in health care; the very profits that would enable health care companies to deal with high costs? Why would it be trying to impose a system, the likes of which, has destroyed health care in virtually every country in which it has been tried? I know it, you know it, the government knows it. Why then does our government want it? What is the point here?

The point is altruism. The Health Care Plan is not about better health care; it is about expanding the level of sacrifice being done by Americans. The President is a committed altruist, more committed than any President in our history; so committed that he believes man MUST sacrifice for others. In his view, not only are profits evil, wasteful and theft, they are also the cause of all human problems. Of course he believes that only sacrifice will solve those problems. Somehow he has connected all good to sacrifice and all evil to capitalism and profits (Yes, I know, he's Harvard educated, but I suspect that his real influences come from his mother and his surrogate fathers). He believes, from the depths of his soul, that sacrifice is man's imperative; there is no choice, there is no other option, there is no argument, there is no advisor and there is no logic that would convince him otherwise. For him, there is nothing to discuss, altruism is the answer for all questions. This is why his government health care plan is aimed at destroying the profits of hospitals, doctors and private companies. This is why he is the most dangerous President in our history.

If I were to imagine the mind of an altruist speaking what it really believes, it would be something like this: "The only thing that is important for you to understand is that YOU WILL go along with what we tell you; you MUST accept our dominion over you, you MUST live for your fellow man, not some time, not occassionally, but ALL the time; every minute of your life. You are base, evil, filled with original sin, you are the scum of the earth, you are a filthy creature that does nothing but consume the planet and all of its precious life. You are the enemy of life on this planet. Your existence on this planet is the problem and your desire for industry, profits, rights, protections and consumption is nothing more than your petty self-glorification which, today, has come to an end. Here is the gun that says so. From now on, there will be no such thing as profit or the desire for a better life. The day of self-interest is over. The day of thinking you are special is over. This is the time, for the first time in history, where sacrifice rules. Forget your petty self. Rights? Rights are just words that you use in order to exploit people. We won't have any of that. And that you MUST understand. There will be no getting out of the absolute requirement that you WILL sacrifice. Are there any questions? If so, shut up. Now get in line."

Perhaps you think that altruism is about helping people voluntarily, being nice and empathetic. Hopefully you will reconsider this view. The truth is, if you consider altruism to be the right philosophy, you must insist that man not allow the existence of self-interest in any manner whatsoever. You must support Barack Obama totally. And you must practice what you preach. You must be the first to sacrifice your whole being to his cause.

All of the concepts, principles and ideas that we hold dear, ideas that are espoused in our Constitution, will have to go away; they will be discredited in order to make way for the one man who can bring about the triumph of total sacrifice. You'll have no problem about destroying the Constitution. As a dutiful citizen, you will be free only to advance the cause of sacrifice. Even though you may have joined the cause voluntarily, you will insist that the government force dissenters to join; those who refuse to join must be killed. Why compromise when total altruism is at stake? In fact, we know that many people from the last generation, particularly the older ones, had a stake in capitalism and self-interest. Many will pretend to be with you and others will secretly work against the cause...perhaps you'll think that we should just kill them all in order to purify the nation and make the way clear for a proper altruism. This coercive, insistence on sacrifice must be your most precious heartfelt desire. For the first time in history, an altruistic utopia is within your reach. Forget those stale ideas such as reality, cause and effect, the lessons of history, coming doom and other such drivel. Those are the lies of evil reactionaries. You will be impatient with anyone who wants to discuss old ideas. This is your time. You are on the verge of creating the first truly "moral" world in history.

Is this what you want? Do you not see that we are not just engaging in a liesurely debate about whether we should help others or not? The critical issue of our time is whether a once free people will recognize that total sacrifice has been imposed upon them without their choice. That is what Barack Obama has been doing. He isn't the first to try it.

You must realize that Obama stands for your slavery. This is why he refuses to work with "the opposition"; this is why he believes Tea Party protesters are fascists and wrong; this is why he talks in flowery words and eloquent phrases about a new America of sacrifice; this is why he advocates mandatory service for every citizen (proposed by Rahm Emanuel); this is why he apologizes to the world for things America has done; this is why he took weeks to criticize Iran while the people rioted in the streets; this is why he supports a potential dictator in Honduras against a Constitutional government; this is why he is spending more than all Presidents before him combined; this is why he fires executives of private companies, this is why he bails out companies and unions that supported him in the election, this is why he disenfranchises investors and violates the sanctity of contract, this is why he supports Cap and Trade that will virtually destroy American industry; this is why he supports card check for unions, why he supports net neutrality, "diversity" in broadcasting, this is why you hear reports about Marxists and other totalitarian types in his government; this is why he has no problem shoving oppressive and expensive programs down our throats; this is why he supports a Health Care Bill that will destroy health care. He does these things because he believes we must sacrifice. He won.

If you know of a system or philosophy other than altruism that more thoroughly destroys freedom, affluence, happiness, idealism and a respect for man, then I'd like to know what it is. It does not matter to President Obama that your life is destroyed through his massive spending programs. It does not matter that you will be forced into virtual slave labor to accomplish his vision of total sacrifice by all; in fact, when the time is right, he will have no problem sending the cops to arrest you for refusing to participate. The only thing that matters to the President is that you, the formerly selfish American, will pay with your hide for the privilege of living in his America. You will be made to suffer for all the evil done by capitalism in the world. You can complain about your hunger and strife but that is your just reward, he thinks. This is the real soul of Barack Obama. Is it yours?

The question before us as a nation is a simple one. Are we going to stand for self-interested freedom or altruistic slavery? If you want better health care, or even a better America, stop this so-called “Health Care” bill. It screams out that man is evil and must be stopped from making a profit. It screams out that your life will soon be the property of the government. It screams out that dictatorship is what you can expect from the future. If you value life, you will do everything you can to insist that this bill be resoundingly defeated. If you value life you must dis-value this government.*

*For a rational treatment of the Health Care Issue, read “Moral Health Care versus Universal Health Care by Lin Zinzer and Paul Hsieh at The Objective Standard: http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/moral-vs-universal-health-care.asp

To learn about altruism and its sinister intent, Read Atlas Shrugged.

Alinsky and “Rules for Radicals”

Well, I did it. I spent the $14.00 plus tax to get a copy of “Rule for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. I must say, it was an interesting read. You can really get the soul of the man from this book. The smell of poison and rot is palpable.

Enough of ridicule; let’s look at the philosophy. First of all, it is clear that Alinsky was a Marxist masquerading as a “democrat”. Proclaiming democracy has been the method of Marxists since the days of Lenin. American progressives and Marxists have developed the skill of talking “like” they espouse democracy and you can hear it in the words of people such as Obama and Rathke. It is a ruse, a radical’s way of wedging into the mainstream while incrementally inserting more and more government coercion into our lives.

It is an easy bait and switch; they say they favor the people (by distorting Lincoln's quote "of the people, by the people and for the people") and, they claim, they want to ensure people get their rights. What they mean by “rights” is the stealthy move, the bait and switch. The rights to which they refer are man-made "rights" rather than the natural rights enumerated in the Constitution. They are the rights of the poor to receive the profits of the rich. Yes, this is Marxism, but presented as the “will of the people” otherwise known as the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. It is what they call "democracy".

However, Alinsky is not as radical as you might think. He is actually a mainstream intellectual in many ways. Certainly, he shares the same philosophical base with the Marxists but he is also influenced by the same philosophers as are George Soros and Karl Popper. They share the same skeptical base with David Hume and Immanuel Kant.

Before I get into this foundation, I’d like to explain the importance of philosophy for our present debates. Philosophy is the base of all human thinking. It asks questions such as what is the nature of reality (metaphysics), how does man gain understanding (epistemology), what is proper action (ethics), how should he organize his society (politics). The answers to these questions determine the intellectual foundations that justify, argue for and, in some cases, prove what is proper for man. Even if you say that philosophy is powerless in the world, you are uttering a philosophical position.

The philosophers with a skeptical base preached that man is irrational by nature and that knowledge was impotent to affect reality. These thinkers also felt that the only important thing in life is activism; action without foundation; bold leaps and blind decisiveness. Their effect on reality and upon the lives of men was devastating; they brought about the rubble and mass murders of the 20th Century.

Hume, Popper, Dewey and their progeny taught that a philosophy based on sense experience was impractical. They gave us the intellectual fertilizer for Hitler, Stalin and Mao because their ideas destroyed the ability of men to think, to judge and to decide...so they let the murderers decide. Still, today, primarily through Dewey, these are mainstream ideas. Alinsky was of this “tradition”.

What is the power of philosophy? History has shown that whenever a new set of ideas replaces an old set this wipes the slate clean and, for better or worse, men take on new attitudes and new ways of doing things. In fact, this is what we need, a clean slate that denies the skeptics their view of man, offers a new view of man as a hero who possesses sovereignty and integrity.

The idea that reality is “objective” and can be ascertained by man is a legacy of philosopher Ayn Rand and it is the answer to the mistakes of empiricism and skepticism. Philosophers like Hume and Kant blinded men to reality by declaring, without “objective” support that man could never see, let alone understand reality. Rand provided the arguments for a view of man that saw him as efficacious and rights-bearing.

The Enlightenment was a philosophical movement that almost swept the slate clean because it developed as an outgrowth of science. Great pioneers like Galileo and Newton had shown the way for men by positing a new view of reality, a view that saw it as knowable. The new science challenged the view that God’s knowledge was supreme. At first, meekly, Galileo demonstrated through scientific induction that the earth was not the center of the universe, that it actually moved around the sun. This view was difficult for the Church fathers to accept and they punished Galileo’s blasphemy cruelly.

The real meaning of the discoveries of Galileo (and later Newton) was that man could could deal with the world. The view of the Enlightenment meant that man could rely on his senses. It meant a new view of man and life. New questions were raised; what kind of society recognizes man’s natural right to live and prosper; what are rights and how are they derived; how should society be organized so the individual can exercise his rights; how do we protect man from the encroachment of tyrannical power? These are the questions that thinkers like John Locke and Francis Bacon, among others, tried to answer. Bacon concentrated on how to improve man’s ability to induce new knowledge while Locke discovered and developed the concept of natural rights. Man’s knowledge expanded and new words, new ideas, new concepts proliferated everywhere, so much so, that today we hardly recognize the fact that we live under the legacy of the Enlightenment, that the slate of religion had almost been wiped clean. These thinkers were joined in their studies by the men who built America, the Founding Fathers, and later, entrepreneurs who sought to implement this new view of man and create a society that leaves us free to explore and prosper.

My religious friends might be disappointed to know that one of the key outcomes of our founding documents is a secular society. Our founders were well aware of the tyranny that was possible under religious domination. But by declaring man's ability to understand reality, Enlightenment thinkers separated themselves from religious views in a fundamental way. No longer was the source of all knowledge an ancient book written by an unknown man; finally, man could write his own book of knowledge and be certain that it derived from observation and logic rather than revelation. This was a massive shift in attitude and perspective. Men were no longer reciting prayers in their heads and consulting the Bible to decide what to do; they were looking out, not in, thinking, not repeating, acting, not waiting for commands.

The monarchy of England was a theocracy in which the King was considered to be God’s representative on earth. These religious men, our founders, sought to eliminate any possibility that organized religion could control government. They knew that a theocracy was not in the interest of our new nation and they established the separation of church and state in order to protect the rights of all citizens against religious bigotry and the forcible imposition of ideas over the mind of man. And they also established the right of men to think either spiritually or logically as his conscience decided. There were very few atheists during this period; it took religious men of high integrity and philosophical acumen, men focused on the lessons of history, to ensure that religion could not gain control of government. We seem to have forgotten this lesson.

A secular society is what we have today. As proof of this look at how “un-religious” most men are today. Few companies operate on a religious basis, religion is prohibited from public facilities and government buildings, when men discuss issues, many are concerned about understanding “the facts” not “God’s word”; they do not emphasize their religious ideas in the public domain and they consider that religion has no place among men trying to solve "real" human problems. Even many of our leaders, who claim to be deeply religious, present themselves as secular-acting and –sounding people. Most of us do not consider looking into the Bible or other sacred texts in order to understand. We look at reality, analyze the facts and make decisions based upon the best judgment of our leaders. This is a wholly new perspective in the world that we fail to realize because few of us know how pervasive and dominant were the views of religion before the Enlightenment.

The above discussion sets the foundation for an explanation of why Saul Alinsky is wrong; he is wrong because of his faulty philosophy. He is wrong because he pits himself against the learning of the Enlightenment; he is wrong because he does not see man as soveriegn and individual but as collective and indecisive. As I mentioned above, the philosophy of skeptics like Hume, Kant, Dewey and Marx is founded upon the idea that man is weak, irrational and incapable of understanding reality. The skeptics accept the notion that man's senses are invalid; and this view coincides more with the views of King George than it does with the founders of America.

It goes without saying that most radicals influenced by Saul Alinsky are out to transform society into one they consider to be fair. Since they view man as essentially incapable of doing the right thing, they have no problem with using the power of government to "nudge" man (by force) so he does what they think is proper - to sacrifice.

Yet, Alinsky calls the society he is working toward a “free society.” And he even eschews an intellectual foundation founded in Marxist anti-capitalism. Don’t be deceived. There are clues in Rules for Radicals about Alinsky’s real philosophy:

“An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth—truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.”(1)

In these two sentences, Alinsky has told us all we need to know about him. The first flag comes up when we see the term “open society”. If you read my post on George Soros, you’ll remember that an “open” society is one that operates on the premise that there are no “ultimate truths”. Does Alinsky have such a Soros-style society in mind? It is hard to tell from his book. He does mention the term "open society" a few other times but the fact that this book was written for “community organizers” should give you the clue.

The community or society that Alinsky seeks to organize, under his view, is a group of powerless people compared to what he calls the “Haves” meaning those who “have” power. The “Have Nots”, according to Alinsky, should organize and engage in "revolution" against the “Haves”. This assumes that getting power is a struggle between groups who are trying to advance their respective economic positions at any point in time. One group may have it today and another may have it tomorrow - as they vie against each other to advance their own respective benefits. According to this view, there are no fundamental principles that govern such issues as property, rights, contracts, etc. The struggle is about power and who does or does not have it. This sounds like an “open” society.

The idea of an open society was developed by George Soros’ mentor, philosopher Karl Popper. From my Blog Post on Soros:

“Soros writes “…Popper’s Book, ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ struck me with the force of revelation and prompted me to explore the author’s philosophy. He argued that the Nazi and Communist ideologies have something in common; they both claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth. Since the ultimate truth is beyond human reach, both ideologies had to be based on a biased and distorted interpretation of reality; consequently, they could be imposed on society only by the use of repressive methods. He (Popper) juxtaposed a different principle of social organization that is based on the recognition that claims to the ultimate truth cannot be validated. Popper called this principle “open society,” and he held it out as preferable to a definitive design.”

Soros is saying that he views any “defined” society as inherently imperfect because it presumes to do the impossible which is to follow ultimate truth. An “open society” on the other hand is based upon the idea that man cannot really know anything with any certainty and therefore, because it accepts this “truth” it is the more proper society. Apparently, Soros did not notice that saying there is no ultimate truth is a statement of ultimate truth. Yet, he was so struck by the idea that he decided to build his life and business around it. The contradiction didn't stop him.”(2)

It seems we have a philosophical connection between George Soros and Saul Alinsky. Indeed, they are brothers in spirit – after the same social goals. But the philosophical connection is deeper and it goes to the very question of whether Alinsky and Soros are practical men. Popper was an empiricist, a student of David Hume and Immanuel Kant and, as such, this makes both Soros and Alinsky pragmatists. Going back to the quote from Rules for Radicals, we find the second flag in the statement. He has no fixed truth, truth is ever changing, everything is relative. As I wrote in the Soros article:

“If we look at how progressives, skeptics and nihilists operate, we find that, like Soros, their method of using knowledge reveals the consistency of their inconsistent views. You will notice that these people always argue from negative viewpoints that analyze specific issues out of context. They accomplish their political intention by ensuring that people do not see the contradictions in their views, through a selective focus and selective arguments. This is also typical of the arch skeptics, Hume and Kant who both characteristically analyzed specific epistemological issues out of context. From these out-of-context discussions they first sowed confusion and then drew sweeping generalizations to the effect that man could not rely on his sensations, could not rely on his knowledge and therefore his only choice was to follow the dictates of religious leaders and dictators by practicing the altruism they demanded. Let’s be clear, the only purpose of skepticism is to reduce man’s mind to a malleable, reflexive and fallible state. George Soros is merely an opportunist taking advantage of Hume, Kant and Popper's life work.”(3)

I would submit that the same is true of Saul Alinsky, Barack Obama and other community organizers of this ilk. Further, I think that the following could easily be said about these pragmatist community organizers:

“(Soros’ activities) are consistently based upon Popper’s view that man cannot know reality; and, Soros thinks, he (man) must be led in herds down a path of his choosing; a path that benefits Soros and his investors. This can be seen in the political campaigns he supports. These campaigns are not intended to offer open discussions of ideas that give the voter a chance to decide for himself among honorable competitors who disagree. Instead, political campaigns, since Soros, are polarizing and full of moral outrage. The Democrats, for some reason, are good and the Republicans are evil, racist, fascist, corrupt and liars. The Democrats support the common man and the Republicans support the greedy rich. Soros-supported Democrats do not argue the issues; they spew venom and hatred toward Republicans and Tea Party protestors. Leftist blogs do not assume that honest people can disagree; they tell us that the Republicans are vile and evil dictators, dishonest and hateful of all that is good. Theirs is a political moral dualism; they are right and everyone else is stupid.

Why does Soros support such tactics? He is a product of his own philosophy; he has no standard of value when it comes to persuasion, according to Hume and Popper, there are no standards for the development of real knowledge. Rather than present us with better ideas, he can only throw as much money as necessary into Democratic political campaigns to “convince” us, through public relations and constant repetition of lies (since we can’t know anything), to appeal to our emotions, our hatreds, our ignorance. This is the better world that Soros wants to make.”(4) Likewise for Alinsky and today’s community organizers. Likewise for the Obama administration.

In order to defeat the progressive agenda, the battle must be a battle for philosophy; in particular, it must be a battle to decide which is the moral system, capitalism or statism (open society). We must recognize that it is a philosophical premise that makes progressives and community organizers sneer at and ridicule opponents who are businessmen, Tea Party protesters, (even honest) Republicans and other dissenters. It is a moral hatred that calls such people Nazis, haters, racists, rednecks and stupid. We must discover the moral principles that counter these nihilistic attitudes and we must convince people, by the force of better arguments, to realize that nihilistic moralizing and ridicule are not productive and they are not making a better world; they are making conflict, hatred and coercion.

Further, we must recognize that the basic political premise of the radicals is re-distribution. Re-distribution is only possible when we accept the notion that profits are evil and that capitalists are thieves. They call it “social justice” and they believe that proper government should confiscate property (through taxation or inflation). We must recognize that our founders established the pursuit of happiness as a basic right, natural and moral, that true moral action could only happen when people were free to seek a better life. They consciously disenfranchised coercion and removed it from our politics; they fought against the very same type of coercion that the progressives and professional parasites seek to make the law of the land today. When you fight against re-distribution you are defending man’s right to be moral. Therefore, you should have the moral fervor and you should see anyone who disagrees with individual rights as evil and sinister.

Re-distribution leads to dictatorship. Every coercive government does re-distribution. Everything it does is re-distribution. You can call it communism, socialism, fascism, welfare-statism, democracy...they all do it. The only antidote to such evil ideas is the correct implementation of the Constitution of the United States of America.

The basic Alinsky rule is "Do what you can with what you have and wrap it in moral garments." This principle is their flim flam. It is how they disarm you. This is the tactic Obama uses when he advances the idea of a volunteer army funded by the government, when he advances a health care program, Cap and Trade...it is all wrapped in the moral garment of "sacrifice is good." Someone has to say that the garment is immoral; the garment is a cover for theft, a blanket under which corruption and moral decline is the order of the day. It is a cover that enfranchises immorality. We must expose this idea to the light by fighting for our right to be moral, to enjoy life, to keep our profits and to work hard. If you don't strike at the heart of your enemy by attacking this re-distribution deception, you let the radicals live to fight again.

Incrementalism is the principle at the heart of “doing what you can with what you have.” Progressives and Alinsky radicals will take small victories if it helps them establish the principle of re-distribution or keep it intact. They will keep pushing the protections in the Constitution until they are gone. If they get push back from you, they'll push in another direction, but they are always trying to incrementally undermine the Constitution through re-distribution. Whenever they lose a battle, they back off, take advantage of whatever gain they have made and then keep fighting on another issue to further undermine the Constitution. They know the tactic, they effectively use the tactic, and until you catch on to it, they’ll keep taking advantage of you.

The only way to stop incrementalism is to roll back all progressive schemes and totally reject progressives in government...vote them out and don't vote any new progressives in. If anyone accepts the idea that government should interfere in peoples' lives, the best way to deal with them is to divest them of power (This applies to the vast majority of mainstream Republicans as well). It is not just a difference of opinion; progressives and the coercive principles they advocate are the enemies of freedom and they must be rejected wholesale.

The Tea Party struggle has to be a struggle of ideas. We need better ideas in order to win. This means we must educate ourselves about why the founders fought for and defended freedom. We need to understand why the progressives are wrong. We have to read, study and defend our ideas about a proper society founded on freedom...this is how we won our freedoms. This is how we will get them back.

(1) Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky, paperback, page 10
(2) George Soros Tea Party Journal Blog Post
(3) Ibid
(4) Ibid