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.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saturday, December 12, 2009
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
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
Friday, December 11, 2009
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"
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"
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
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."
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."
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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.
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.
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