Understanding the President

Everyone is trying to figure out what motivates President Obama; what makes him tick?

Some people point to his community organizing days when he learned to shakedown businesses through a “protester for hire” scheme that benefited paying customers. Others point to the sundry socialists and communists that populated his childhood and college years. Others point to his large ego or his “thin skin”. Others point to his tendency to govern through Executive Orders or Presidential decrees. Others think he was abused as a child or that he is a closet communist consciously seeking the destruction of our nation on behalf of a foreign power.

You'll find countless articles on the Internet where competent psychologists and doctors try to understand what is wrong with the President. Why is he so aloof and detached from real people? All of these analyses miss the point.

If you want to figure out this President you have to look for the one key principle that guides his every action. And on this count, he is finally transparent. You will find this principle behind every thought, every act, every bill, every speech, every utterance and every suggestion he makes on how you can live a better life. The principle is altruism.

I think our President, unlike every President with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter, has two psychological attachments: 1) to altruism and 2) to a false belief that altruism actually makes things better. He will always believe the first, but right now, he is grappling with the failure of the second.

You might recall the famous dialogue between candidate Obama and "Joe the Plumber" when he informed the electorate of his opinion that re-distributing money to some people was better for everyone. This statement received the ire of many people who see the President's view as a form of Marxism where the government violates the rights of productive people, turns them into virtual slaves and enriches those who are not self-sufficient or productive. Many see this view as the direct opposite of the principles upon which our nation was founded, ideas such as property rights, individual responsibility, voluntary trade and being able to keep the results of your work. Obama's view is altruism, the idea that people have a duty to work for the sake of others rather than themselves. With altruism, sacrifice is the hallmark of the moral life and anyone who lives for himself is considered to be a selfish brute who deserves ostracism and expropriation.

I think our President, almost instinctively, uses altruism as a way to obtain and maintain power, as if altruism is a magic formula with which no one could disagree. And about this, he is thoroughly convinced. He has even cultivated a mystique, a personality cult where you can almost see a magical aura around him, a saintly quality that ritually motivates people to work toward collective goals. In other words, his basic motivation is to encourage and achieve in every American the exact opposite of the pursuit of happiness. The President is at war with happiness. That few people realize this is why so many can’t figure him out.

I don’t think the President is aware of the oligarchic nature of his policies, the Al Capone aspect of everything he does. He does not realize that he is very much like the leader of a neighborhood gang, constantly working to enlist the love of his members, working to inspire them to die for him, to turn them into dutiful soldiers, jealous of internal and external rivals, always protecting turf with knives and guns while running an illegal protection racket.

For the President, the end, the sacrifice of every productive person in the country, justifies the means, lies, treachery and deceit. Everything he does in the name of altruism is another way to launder money to leftists, re-distribute it to his supporters while extorting it from productive business people through emergencies that he creates. His basic method of operation is to excoriate every private company, individual or activity for not caring about others.

Our President has a fixation on altruism. When speaking to college students, he tells them to go into public service rather than private business. When dealing with executives he assumes it is their duty to give in to his "superior" but non-existent wisdom. In taking over the auto companies, he criticizes investors for not sharing in the sacrifice. When addressing the sub-prime crisis, he demands that tax payers and banks pay to keep people in their homes. When taking over college loans he cavalierly assumes that tax payers should put up the money while he bribes students to do community service in return. He put millions of productive people out of work in order to pay for the Stimulus Package that created no jobs for those very same people. And he has repeatedly packed his bills with millions of dollars in pork that benefited leftist charity organizations. At every step of the way, he has offered up sacrifice as the only solution for every problem - and today all of these problems are worse than when he started.

The President does not understand what it means to pursue happiness because his entire life has been based on exhorting people to sacrifice. He does not know that the pursuit of happiness is a far superior motivation than the call to give up one's product. It is the principle that makes possible cooperation, self-interest, the rule of law and capital accumulation. It is the principle of civilized living.

Nor does he know that the perennial call to sacrifice is not a high principle, not even a principle that works; it is the lowest principle of all, a destructive and uncivilized idea, the justification used by dictators and potentates for theft, plunder, robbery and violation of honest people.

What makes him the worst President in our history is his advocacy of sacrifice as a high ideal. Contrary to his own view, his is not a morality that represents the height of intelligence, the culmination of the best education, the greatest principle ever to be learned; an idea so true that only someone truly evil and selfish would disagree. Yet, you must ask yourself, how difficult does this advocacy of sacrifice make his job as President? When the only guide a President has is the belief that "Selfishness is always the problem and sacrifice is always the solution", how aloof and detached would such a President be? Imagine that slogan on the President's desk. Yet, if this were truly the singular magic formula for Presidential problem solving, anyone could be President. Even Barack Obama. No proof required, no logic needed, just this simple non sequiter as a way of life.

Just look at the kinds of people the President has built his career around: Banks, corporations, union leaders, housing developers, college professors, politicians, government bureaucrats; everything he's done through out his career has involved dealing with people who have gotten money according to the principle of re-distribution. They have succeeded only by attaching themselves to the unearned and re-distributed dollar that government takes from hard working Americans. He's never had to make a profit, make a payroll week after week or achieve a healthy bottom line. And, more importantly, he's never experienced the joy of watching people benefit from the work of his own hands or mind.

The President has always been one step removed from the actual productive person who has fed him all his life.

If you want to know why he is out of his element in solving the Gulf oil spillage problem, this is the reason: he does not know how to solve real problems demanding real solutions because he's always invented his problems and made them into a question of selfishness vs. sacrifice. His life's purpose has always been to find those that he can blame for being selfish, protest against them, extort support from them, tax them and regulate them. When this mode of operating does not apply, he is lost and uncomfortable; and the only thing he can do to make his world right again is to politicize the issue by finding selfish villains to kick.

President Obama is a gangster of altruism.

Go to Cuba, Mr. Gochez

As a Tea Party protester, I've come to the protests because of many years of study of such subjects as economics, history and philosophy. Since I was a young man, I considered it my responsibility to understand the world. My goal was to find truth, to understand ideas, to be informed, and more importantly, to connect ideas to their real life consequences. I’ve studied philosophers, from Jesus to Augustine, to Aquinas, to Locke and with stops at Plato, Aristotle, Rand, Hegel, Hume and Kant to name a few. I’ve tried to understand the good from the evil, the practical from the impractical and the honest from the dishonest.

This is why, now as an older American, it pains me to hear the following words from a young American history teacher:

“I want to start by saying that the young man who spoke a little while ago is one of my students and I am so proud because I know our people have strong leaders for years and years to come. (Name of the organization) a revolutionary Mexican organization here, we understand what the (name) are saying, you’re right, this is not just about Mexico, this is about a global struggle against imperialism and capitalism but we know that all of that is happening in the context that where we now stand is stolen, occupied Mexico and the message that we bring is that we want to bring a little more of a revolutionary context to this. Why is it that these people, these shrill, racist white people want to keep us out of this country; it is not because simply the color of our skin; it’s not because they simply want to exploit us; let me tell you why. Because on this planet right now is six billion people at the forefront of the revolutionary movement is the Raza. We have a long history and example of our commandante, Fidel Castro Ruz, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, we have Brazil, Equador, you name it, we have nine, nine, left of center governments in Latin America right now and they know something that one young Argentine called Che Guevarra said, it’s called the domino theory, and he knew that every single country would go revolutionary, one after the other after the other after the other. So what do they fear? They know that every single country; they know that we no longer will fall to these lies called borders, we know that a Salvadorian, that a Guatemalan, a Nicaraguan and a Mexicano; there’s no damn difference, we are all one people, so with that in mind, we see ourselves, all of us here, as the northern front of a Latin American Revolutionary movement. There are more than 40 million of our people north of the Rio Grande. That means to them that’s 40 million potential revolutionaries north of the border inside the belly of the beast, so when you think about why they want to keep us of all people out, that’s why, because they know that we now know the truth, they know that we are now raza, we’re professionals, we’re educators, we are revolutionary students. What does that mean? We are not just a regular culture any more, we are a culture of revolutionary spirit, and that’s the fear. So with that being said, I want to leave you with this, as a revolutionary, and with revolutionary context, let’s be clear about one thing, our enemy is not the minutemen, quote me, our enemy is not the minutemen, because the minutemen are not the ones who have killed over 4,600 people at those borders, our enemy is the same enemy that Hugo Chavez has, our enemy is the same enemy that keeps Africa poor, our enemy is the same enemy that keeps Asia poor, our enemy is capitalism and imperialism. If we are serious about making change, if you are serious about making change, let me tell you, the struggle will go on for many more years after we leave U.C.L.A.. Reading a book or writing a book, or teaching a class, that is not part of the movement. What you do 24 hours a day as a professional revolutionary, that is what will lead our people to liberation.”

This short speech, which is a famous youTube video, represents many of the basic questions that I struggled with as a young man. During my later teens, a widely publicized movement sought to convince me that its view of the world was correct. This movement also preached revolution against capitalism and it saw America as an imperialist nation bent on subjugating the world. These people rioted against the Vietnam War; some of them threw bombs and sought violence; but I realized that they were communist agitators using the War as a way of harming our country and destroying our freedoms. Their descendents are now in power, and they continue to poison the minds of young people.

The teacher who spoke the above words is Ron Gochez. He is a history teacher at LA Unified School District. In another video shot by Fox News he declares openly his advocacy of socialist revolution but claimed that he did not favor violent revolution. With assurances, he informs us that he never lets his revolutionary ideas interfere with his mandate as a teacher. Yet, I seriously doubt this claim. If you watch the video you see a couple of young students at this protest.

I think it is more than hypocritical for a history teacher in our time to claim that he can be objective when his “private” beliefs betray a serious lack of objectivity, a misunderstanding of history and a bias against the very system that feeds him.

In fact, Mr. Gochez is doing serious damage to his students. Even during the speech quoted above, he takes pride in one of his students who had spoken before him, saying “that the young man who spoke a little while ago is one of my students and I am so proud because I know our people have strong leaders for years and years to come.”

The problem for radical communist-leaning agitators like Mr. Gochez is that most Americans are decidedly anti-communist and anti-revolutionary; so much so that, in many circles, radicals have had to “mainstream” their radicalism and mimic “liberal” ideas in order to stay viable. In fact, even today, if you advocate revolution against the American system, most Americans will not listen to you. Do Mr. Gochez’ students know that radical communists in their communities are pretending to be mainstream and that their real goal is not to better the lives and educations of young hispanic people but to indoctrinate them against capitalism?

Probably not, which means they also do not know that radicals have sought to create enclaves that support radical views in their neighborhoods. What this means is that radical communist leaders like Mr. Gochez want to positively dispose young people, not to the truth, but to radical ideas that destroy their ability to do commerce and prosper. By raising young people to be "professional" revolutionaries, these communist teachers are making young people poor, then pointing to the poverty as the fault of capitalism. This, I submit, is a travesty. Where are the parents of these children?

Sometimes when I travel abroad, I encounter people with anti-capitalist views. I also meet honest people who want to improve their societies but don’t know how to do it. My travels provide me with a unique opportunity to understand how the same principles at play in America operate in a different context.

Those with anti-capitalist views that I’ve encountered tend to look to government in order to survive. Many of them are very wealthy but also protected in guarded communities against the poverty that exists just a few blocks from them. They devise business schemes that will make them wealthy; then they turn to government to ensure they receive subsidies, seed money, special privileges and business contracts. They will talk about the history of their country, point to the poverty, the corruption of government officials and then angrily rant against capitalism without a clear statement of just how capitalism did it, much less what their definition of capitalism happens to be. Their hatred is so strong that if you tried to defend capitalism in their presence you would be considered an advocate of slavery and jack boot fascism.

Yet, they know nothing about economics. To them capitalism is not an economic system, it is everything corrupt that has ever happened in their society. I think this is how their thinking goes: Those people who succeed in life have to be aggressive and predatory in order to acquire riches. They have to control natural resources, buy government officials, create monopolies, use slave labor and create favorable laws. Since capitalism is about success at any cost, every corrupt act is capitalism. This view, based on the false idea that self-interest drives people to brutality and plunder, misses the point that capitalism is not a government, it is not a country operating according to mercantilist principles or manifest destiny; it is not a military junta or a family of oligarchs controlling the natural resources of a country. Capitalism is nothing more than freedom for every individual and that means every capitalist transaction is based on voluntary exchange. Any effort to control capitalism by governments is coercion against individual citizens, a violation of their individual rights and an effort to control the decisions that they would otherwise make on their own.

It is important to understand this because many young people, particularly in hispanic communities, have been fed a lie. They are told that capitalism is a system of exploitation where capitalists seek to make fortunes off of workers and consumers and that this process makes everyone but the captitalists poor. They are taught that the opposing principles at work today are force (capitalism) vs. liberty (socialism) which is a reversal of the actual opposing principles. They are taught that self-interest (capitalism) is inferior to self-sacrifice and charity (welfare statism). They are told that our government should fight selfish interests in order to protect the people, that the government should throttle these selfish interests, take their money and give it to the people. They tell young people that every enemy is a capitalist group such as doctors, drug companies, oil companies, bankers, financial professionals, etc. The good people, according to these lies are people like Hugo Chavez, who are supposedly out to destroy this system of self-interest and install a system based on the good of the people (democracy).

What they miss is that they are being duped by people who want to use the arguments above to gain power. Among those are revolutionaries, community organizers, labor unions, politicians and highly placed financial experts who are using their power to plunder the wealth created by the capitalists, not for the sake of the poor, but for the sake of power, not to make a better society, but to establish the principle of re-distribution on such a massive scale that they can launder money (unseen) straight into their own pockets.

The real division in most countries is between individuals (including honest business people) who are increasingly taxed and impoverished versus government officials and oligarchs who use the government (and anti-capitalist propaganda) in order to control the citizens. The real division is between capitalism and liberty versus tyranny and dictatorship. If you've swallowed the poison that people like Hugo Chavez are really on the side of the people, you are being duped by your teachers and fed a lie. What they've missed is that in order for government to do good for "the people" it should leave the people alone to solve their own problems not interfere in those problems. Our nation was founded on this principle.

Those who want to create a better society in many South American countries, the truly honest people, have no idea about what it would take to make things better and they feel helpless, even if they are in government. Why don’t they know how to make things better? They too believe that capitalism is the system that has created so much evil. They’ve been taught that the imperialism of capitalist nations has created their poverty. They’ve been taught that capitalism is corrupt and that self-interest is evil. They have no idea what they should support because anything that is proposed must also compromise with the oligarchs who control the government and natural resources. The last thing they want to support is capitalism because they might be killed by the revolutionaries in their neighborhoods; most likely these revolutionaries are people financed by Castro or Chavez.

I once had a discussion with a foreign journalist from a South American country. I pointed out that in reading about his country, the key question that seemed to perplex most intellectuals was how to balance the forces in society among government bureaucrats who were associated with corruption and the private industrial sector that was regulated by these bureaucrats. It was common to find a debate between government control and private business; about how to maintain a balance so corruption could not get in the way of progress and jobs for the poor. Government regulations and constraints were always seen as necessary in order to protect the people from capitalist corruption, yet the protectors were also corrupt. It seemed to me that all of the negatives in this society were caused by government but that no one had the courage to say so…for fear of his life or job. I told this person that this balancing act was going on even in the United States. I pointed out that it was an aspect of fascism and that he should try to understand the nature of this system if he wanted to understand what was happening in his country. In particular, I suggested Ludwig von Mises and Ayn Rand as good reading. He had never heard of these people but he told me he would look them up.

This particular society was within the geographic circle around Venezuela. He told me that many people in his country did not like Chavez but others loved him and wanted to turn their government into a copy of what Chavez was building in Venezuela. Remember that Ron Gochez above also praised Chavez. You have to ask yourself how much Chavez money is going into LA neighborhoods to help support the “pro-Chavez” hypocrisy.

Another discussion, with a Venezuelan business person, somehow got around to President Chavez. I listened for a few minutes while he told me about the great things Chavez was doing in Venezuela and how he supported everything. I responded that I disliked Chavez because he was a dictator, whereupon this very same person spent the next half hour describing in detail the horrors of Chavez' rule and how he was ruining the country. His emotion and anger gushed out of him like a flood and I could tell which was his real opinion. He thanked me for giving him an opportunity to express how he really felt about Chavez.

Anti-capitalist views around the world betray a major thinking error that philosopher Ayn Rand sought to address in her writing. Self-interest is considered so evil in our cultural context that anything done for the sake of it is worthy of ridicule and anger. In some countries this view against self-interest is virulent and many people have never discovered that it is deficient and harmful. Everywhere, the ideas of pride, rational thinking, reason, anything created by the individual mind, are considered the cause of bad results, so much so that few people today would dare to claim self-interest as a motive. Rather, they go out of their way to claim that everything they do is for others. The result in economic decline is visible in the lives and neighborhoods of these people. If you are raised to have no pride in your work, if you think that doing anything for your own sake is evil, how can you have the courage and the self-confidence necessary to be successful? I agree with Rand that the self is the basic unit of humanity and that all good proceeds from the individual mind, that rational self-interest does not involve harming others; in fact, the practice of harming others to obtain values is not in anyone’s self-interest.

The Founding Fathers, when they created our country, did something unique. For the first time in history, they declared that man had a right to the pursuit of happiness. This ensured that the government could not interfere in men’s lives. Though few would admit it, this idea was the spark that unleashed self-interest in our society and liberated men to offer in trade their best products in return for the best products of other men. This idea created a society that was not zero-sum, as most societies of the past were. The result was a convergence of millions of men each pursuing happiness, each living according to their self-interest and offering value for value. Contrary to the Marxist view, our system was a system of liberation because it respected the freedom of man to do as he wished and it did not allow men to exploit one another.

The result of our system was civility, a government of laws not of men, ever-improving products, new products, new ideas, economies of scale, cleaner, tastier food, lower prices and jobs, jobs, jobs. The entire society became elevated and everyone saw his life as always getting better. People were happier, cleaner, more self-confident, more opinionated, and like typical Americans, always smiling because life had a surprise behind every corner. As time went by, even the ability to go anywhere one wanted, at a rapid pace, make business deals over broader areas, create massive industries that improved infrastructure, cleaned the environment and helped people live longer lives became commonplace. This was America and it was great because of freedom. Marx never invented a better more successful idea.

Exploitation, which is the hallmark of dictatorship, became impossible in our country because the government was prohibited from interfering in the rights and decisions of the people. Societies like communism and fascism, such as that of Hugo Chavez, became obsolete…until Kant. Kant, who was becoming influential in Europe, began teaching that man could not understand reality, that he had no means for connecting to reality and that his only way of acting was to invoke an imperative to duty. Kant, and others like him, including Hegel, provided the foundation for Marx who preached that the best way to make people do their “duty” was to create a government that acted on behalf of the people; that would direct people about what to do for the sake of the whole. This was the anti-happiness society based on service to others and its basic premise was that the best should take care of the least. Only conflict, resentment and anger could be the result of such a system.

Using misapplied economic principles, Marx acknowledged the power of capitalism to create machines and abundance but wanted government to own and manage the machines. He denigrated capitalists because, presumably they acted only on the basis of what was good for them rather than for the worker or society. For communists, capitalism was wasteful and needed a good dose of economic planning so the needs of the people could be met rather than the lust of the capitalists. Marx preached an overthrow of the capitalist system in favor of the dictatorship of the proletariat. With Marx, every idea became its opposite, freedom became slavery, free speech became praising the leaders, voluntary action became joining the labor union, and free choice became doing as the national economic plan required. Morality became acquiesence and immorality became wanting anything for your own private desires; and finally, abundance and plenty became poverty in the form of products that no one wanted and scarcity of the things people wanted.

Marx wrongly saw economic transactions as zero-sum. In other words, when the capitalist made a trade, according to Marx, he gained and you lost. In this circumstance, it was thought, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. This idea, broadcast millions of times and taught to our children in schools, was a lie. Capitalism actually elevated everyone who participated because the products offered by capitalists actually made peoples’ lives better. And the decider on value was not a government bureaucrat but the individual who evaluated products based upon what was good for him as an individual. In capitalism everyone improved his/her life and poverty was eliminated for the vast majority.

Those influenced by Marx sought to undermine capitalism in order to take over the machines, under the false premise that government can take over the power of production, eliminate the capitalist, and create a new abundance based on what is good for ‘the people’ rather than the evil capitalist. According to this theory, government could become the de facto capitalist and institute collectivism without any damage to the system, without any harm to the principle of supply and demand, or the pricing system, or the banking system, or production, or the happiness of the people. To convince people that capitalism was the problem, their critique of history under capitalism accused the capitalist system of being for slavery, imperialism, exploitation, child labor, the breakup of the family, insanity, alienation and poverty - all hallmarks of the pre-capitalist and communist systems. Every conceivable lie that could be told by these propagandists was told about capitalism. The result: the communist system under "enlightened" leadership and control, brought about the plundering of capital investment(which leads to economic depression and decaying factories and cities), the disruption of supply and demand, the inefficiency of government price controls, the inefficiency of the banking system, less production, less happiness among the people.

And now, after decades of decimation by revolutionary ideas, Mr. Gochez, apparently unaware of this history, praises, in the company of young hispanics, one of the most brutal collectivist thugs (Chavez) on the planet, calls him a liberator and seeks to do to South and North America what Lenin and Stalin did to Russia, through a new revolution in a society full of capitalist goods and self-confident, independent people. Does he really think that hispanic people are that stupid?

Apparently, Mr. Gochez has wiped out of his mind the city of Berlin where people braved guns, barbed wire and concrete in order to escape to the evil capitalist system. I have been to this city (in 1990) and compared the squalor of communist East Berlin with the vibrancy of capitalist West Berlin. Perhaps Mr. Gochez should bring to class some of these stories and pictures of Soviet guards shooting at East German people escaping the revolution that he loves. Then let's see for whom his students will cheer, the escaping citizens seeking freedom or the shooting soldiers trying to protect the revolution.

Or how about stories I was told in Germany about families in the West who allowed relatives from the East to visit their homes. One thing they noticed is how poorly groomed their eastern relatives were, how unkempt, uncut and unshaved were the men and women. Many examples are known that one day these West German professionals returned to their homes to find them burglarized with all possessions gone. Their communist relatives, in many cases, had the courtesy to leave a note behind that said something to the effect, "We've had nothing all these years. Now it is time for us to have something." Perhaps Mr. Gochez can tell his students about this history. There really is plenty of material about this revolution.

Or, to keep it interesting for the kids, perhaps Mr. Gochez can tell his students about "The Moonwalk Revolution" in 1988 during a Michael Jackson concert held in West Berlin, when the Stasi (East German Secret Police) brutalized East German teenagers for screaming "the wall must go, the wall must go" and hauled them off to Stasi headquarters for interrogation. Why would the good communist revolutionaries do that to teenagers, Mr. Gochez? Is this the kind of future you promise to your young students?

What few communists and progressives realized is that this scheme, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, was unworkable. Collectivism required the sacrifice of the able to the unable. This principle caused decline because hard working people soon realized that the system was another form of slavery. The harder they worked, the less they received. So, typically, as happened in the Soviet Union and Communist China, they produced less. The poor, on the other hand, knew that they would be taken care of and so had no incentive to produce. With the decline in production, no one thought to question the immorality of the system (who could possibly question sacrifice for society?). If sacrifice did not work, someone was to blame. As always with collectivism, the able aren't working hard enough or the capitalists are sabotaging the system, there are enemy spies everywhere; someone must be purged, imprisoned or killed. The communist system which promised to liberate the people and make them affluent becomes millions of dead bodies. Yet, even the pictures of the past that prove the unworkability of communism, the pictures of dead starving peasants or concentration camps or firing squads, are not convincing for Mr. Gochez. History means nothing as long as you can blame it on capitalism or manifest destiny or imperialism. So much for honesty in the world of history teachers.

A society based on re-distribution, such as communism or socialism, can never succeed because it does not acknowledge a person’s right to act in his own self-interest. With the heavy antipathy toward self-interest due to Kant’s influence, as well as that of religion, any society (such as Venezuela or Cuba for instance) that descends to re-distribution as foundational, must necessarily have an enemy in the United States, the symbol of the pursuit of happiness. That’s why all socialists accuse the United States of imperialism, war mongering, theft of resources and exploitation. Chavez hates the United States because he cannot exist without a scapegoat, without some other nation to blame for his own mistakes. The lies of Chavez are really about creating cover for his power grab not about some evil done by the USA. No one should be confused about that. What’s your excuse Mr. Gochez?

Notice also the blindness on the part of the ruling progressives today who are nothing more than closet Marxists. Government officials, convinced that the best principle of a proper government is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”, expect that every time this principle is implied in an action of government, it will necessarily produce positive results. They are blind to the history which has shown that this principle has never created abundance. To them government-imposed altruistic sacrifice is a magic formula. Needless to say, they are always disappointed when reality will not comply and things actually get worse. A case in point is the near trillion dollar Stimulus Package of 2009 that produced not one single new job.

Capitalism has nothing to do with exploitation and imperialism. It has nothing to do with concentration camps and jackboots or manifest destiny. On the other hand, Chavez, Castro, Morales (and their enabler Ron Gochez) and those other dominos are about one thing, separating people from their values, destroying their values, destroying their freedoms and their future for the sake of one thing: their thuggish life-long power over helpless victims. Why do they hate capitalism? Free people don’t want to live under dictatorship. Free people can think for themselves. Free people know when they are being lied to. Free people have a strong enough government to squash the cockroaches of socialism.

Mr. Gochez, with the great life he lives in America, as a respected school teacher in LA, for some reason has missed all this. You have to wonder why. Certainly, someone in his past decided to escape the dirt roads, the dirt floors, the tin roofs and the abject poverty found in Mexico. These people did not come to America to escape capitalist exploitation. They voted for America and capitalism. Why not Mr. Gochez? I’m sure he’d say that he’s seen the evils of capitalism, much like other anti-capitalists who don’t have a clue about history. I’d say he’s intellectually blind.

People like Mr. Gochez are blind dupes of the enemies of man and human progress. They are dupes of Marx and today’s equivalent of Hitler in his various disguises. Because he cannot think for himself, Mr. Gochez encourages young people in LA to admire criminals like Chavez and Castro. Ask the Cubans about Mr. Castro. Try praising Castro in a Miami school district and see how many pitchforks come after you.

You have to ask yourself; why would an American school teacher think he is doing good by praising thugs and murderers to knowledge-hungry school children? Why would a history teacher ignore the devastation, poverty, concentration camps, murder and the outright raping of the people that will take place if Latin America goes communist? What convinces him that everything will become peaceful in a communist Latin America when history has shown that communism always degenerates into conflict and theft, murder and plunder…by the very communist revolutionaries that espouse liberation?

Where is this history teacher getting his history? Check his reading list.

As for other young hispanics north of the border, Mr. Gochez, that you encourage to be "professional" revolutionaries, I'd like to ask where they are getting their money. Given the lack of historical accuracy in your views, what productive value are they providing in society that earns them the status of "professional"? In this country of free people, a "professional" usually brings enough value to his job that he pays his own way. Are your "professional" revolutionaries making their own money or are they being paid by tax payer dollars? Or, just perhaps, is it possible they are being provided for by Hugo Chavez? You, and they, must be scamming someone in order to be able to wear new clothes, get haircuts, drive a car, eat at restaurants and preach to innocent young people your "unprofessional" and nonsensical lies. No honest person would pay you to dishonor and insult this wonderful country.

And, believe me, you are dreaming if you think a majority of hispanics will run to your corrupt cause. Many of our ancestors came to this country for freedom; many of us fought for freedom against people who said exactly the same lies as your buddies, Chavez, Castro and Morales. We will never fight for your revolution. We will, however, fight against it and, proudly, we will fight for capitalism and freedom.

You can go to Cuba for all I care.

Is Beck off the Rails?

Media studies have reported that Glenn Beck’s Fox News program has had a 30 percent drop in ratings. And even though Beck will be a light across the sky for some time to come, there has to be a reason why his ratings have dropped.

I think it is about his stand on religion. A large number of his viewers are Tea Partiers; many of whom don’t think religion is a Tea Party issue. Certainly, many Tea Party people love watching Beck when he takes on big spenders. Yet, for many, it makes no sense when he routinely ends his shows by saying that the only solution to our problems is “God.”

Why do religious conservatives have an incessant need to bring up religion and God on almost every issue? Is God the conservative’s idea of a fundamental principle that everyone accepts? Are conservatives saying that they refuse to engage in secular political debate? Are they saying that the Founding documents are proof that God exists? Are they saying that their best argument is "divine intervention" and the centuries-old Ten Commandments?

Beck says that God is the basis of our society. To support this view, he trots out religious historians to provide arguments on his show. Since when did the truth in our history come only from historians who think that God has intervened in the founding of our nation? When did it become popular to ignore the influences of Locke, Bacon, Newton and other thinkers who brought us some of our most advanced “secular” ideas? (See my blog post, "The Forgotten "ism")

A case in point is Beck’s recent profile of George Whitefield, a pre-revolutionary religious teacher who developed the speaking style that is still common among Evangelical preachers today. During this show, he elevated the preacher to the status of Founding Father because he was well-known in the colonies and presumably supported the revolution. Whitefield was educated in Oxford, England which at the time was the seat of the Enlightenment, where John Locke and other prominent thinkers also got their educations. Enlightenment ideas were in the air, so to speak, while Whitefield was at Oxford. If he did not grasp the world-shattering “this-worldly” ideas of the Founding Fathers at Oxford, he certainly learned the skill of communication there.

Whitefield visited the colonies often and, as Beck mentions, he was one of the most famous men on both sides of the Atlantic. His preaching, the precursor of outdoor Evangelical revivals of the 19th and 20th Centuries was full of the eloquence and fire possible to a man who knew the use of words, scripture and especially had an understanding of “rendering unto Caesar” in a time when Caesar was the King of England.

One fact that Beck did not mention is that Whitefield actively fought for the re-legalization of slavery in Georgia. At a time when slavery had been banned there, Whitefield was one of the most vocal advocates for slavery. Of course, some of our nation’s Founders had slaves, yet many of them still abhorred the idea. Whitefield had no such view. After slavery became legal in Georgia again, Whitefield purchased several slaves to help him build his orphanage and raise money for charity.

Yet, Beck often quotes Jefferson, "Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there is one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."(1) He even tells us to apply that maxim to everything that he says on his show.

Beck sees our society as a gift from God, divinely constituted and ordained to follow God's nature. Believe it or not, this view is eerily similar to that of Jefferson who was a Deist. The only difference between Beck and Jefferson is that, like most Deists, Jefferson did not believe that God intervenes in our world. On the other hand, Beck believes our society was created by God's direct intervention through Moses, Jesus and the Founding Fathers.

That God also ordained the myriad churches and religious societies through out history that were not based on individual rights, many of which were murderous, warlike, corrupt and exploitive is somehow lost on Beck. How is it that God got it wrong for so many centuries and countenanced brutality and persecution? I am assuming Beck thinks these societies were somehow not based on God and that God always had our society in mind. He also seems to ignore the fact that the only difference between these past cultures and our own is that ours, uniquely, was inspired by the Enlightenment, not by the Church of England.

Beck's argument, unfortunately, sidesteps reason and falls under the philosophical realm known as mysticism; and it leads him to rationalize the mysticism of many of the Founders as foundational of society. Yet this view does not reflect the fact that many of the Founders saw the establishment of a religion by government as dangerous for our freedoms. Like Jefferson, they saw the imposition of a set of religious ideas, not uniformly agreed upon, as potentially despotic and they had seen such dangers play out in the real world through the Church of England. Jefferson: "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity."(2) The point is that no religion should be established as the state religion because of the danger to our freedoms posed by an effort to establish uniformity of thought. Man cannot be forced to think like his brothers.

The fight to restore our freedoms today is not about freedom of religion. If you believe it is, you should join the Republican Party…but I doubt you would get much support from people who are more concerned about today’s massive interventions of government. I suspect that the point for conservatives like Beck is not that we must fight for God in order to save our society; I think Beck's is more a visceral, emotional insistence on religion that is rooted in past sorrows; and although this is sad, and his rising from the ashes is inspirational, emotions can only help us learn what is going on inside of us, not what is going on in the world, and especially how we should build our society.

There was no miracle of divine intervention in the founding of our country. There was instead some serious and well-thought-out philosophical work, based in logic and experience. Our Founders were thinkers of the highest order and practical men of action; they were people out of time and space who realized, through the singularity of a single thought (that all men are created equal) that in their time they could strike a deadly blow to tyranny; they bravely embraced their opportunity, rather than letting it get away, to make the world beautiful. Unlike so many leaders of the past, they embraced "the pursuit of happiness" not God's utopia.

This singular group of men included the most profound thinkers in the history of humanity and they created a society that made possible free cooperation among men (rather than conflict and plunder); they liberated their minds and bodies to achieve heights never before imagined. Just ask yourself if a free society like ours would have been possible without the influence on these men of the Enlightenment. Let’s give the Founders credit for their accomplishment as men of intellect. With no disrespect intended, why give God the credit when this singular group of men, at this fortuitous turn in history, created the “perfect” nation. We owe them more than our respect; we owe them our very existence, our sacred honor, our love and our highest appreciation. To leave the credit with God makes it more difficult for us to understand the roots in reality of the idea that man should be free.

Like Jefferson, the Founders sought, not a utopian society but a "rational" society. They wanted to live where they deemed, establish the comforts or hardships they chose, think what they wanted and to raise their children in the best possible way. Again Jefferson, in a letter to his good friend Madison: "Monroe is buying land almost adjoining me. Short will do the same. What would I not give you could fall into the circle? With such a society I could once more venture home and lay myself up for the residue of life, quitting all its contentions which grow daily more and more insupportable. Think of it. To render it practicable only requires you to think it so. Life is of no value but as it brings us gratifications. Among the most valuable of these is rational society. It informs the mind, sweetens the temper, cheers our spirits, and promotes health..."(3)

Certainly, many of the Founders were religious men. And some of them, especially Jefferson, were Deists who thought God had little direct influence in the affairs of men; that He had gotten the world started and left the rest to our free will. As a Deist, Jefferson would have appealed to reason, to science, to reality and this attitude is clearly shown in his writings.

He sometimes bemoaned injustice and expressed hope that people would learn from their own experiences that reason taught a different lesson. For Jefferson, God was just, but his justice was sleeping; man had the task of understanding the gifts that God had given and it would be the actions of men that would determine the future. On the issue of slavery, he wrote, "...can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever..." For Jefferson, slavery was such an evil idea that he trembled at its potential for awakening God from his slumber. He was not saying that God would awaken; he was using a rhetorical device to say that slavery was very bad.

For Jefferson, it is man that brought about the abomination of slavery and he hoped that God would not awaken to inflict his punishment. This is Deism; a view that man walked a fine moral line while God slept, and that it was man's role to learn for himself. Jefferson continues: "...that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."(5)

To men like Jefferson, it was about exposing every idea to the light of reason, even slavery and the idea that God existed. What mattered most to him was how men used their minds. Certainly, among the Founders, many of them, were Christians; but what is unique about them is that they were so principled, so influenced by the ideas of the Enlightenment, that they were willing to put their own beliefs on the line and allow the truth to will out…regardless of what that truth would be. Men like Jefferson knew that accepted ideas would change over time; that men would continue to question and test reality; that even the idea of God as it stood in his time would be questioned, that free men could eventually span the universe and learn ideas that men during his time could barely fathom – and he wanted that bright future of questioning everything. He must have felt deeply proud to have been a man ushering in a bright new age of intellectual freedom. To Jefferson and other Enlightenment thinkers human progress was about making advances in human thought, not resting on the stagnant ideas of the past. No conservative was Jefferson.

The constant insistence on religion by conservatives like Beck is quite frankly, scary. We’ve got to restore all of our Constitutional liberties, not just our right to think as we desire. And we must respect the rights of all human beings, even those with whom we don’t agree.

To Mr. Beck, I’d like to say, “I find you to be a highly admirable individual and I am impressed by your ability to communicate complex ideas. You are truly an indispensable person during these times. I shudder to think of the pressures you are under from so many fronts. But the truth that you seek is that of Jefferson.

It is the Founders' insistence on the right to the pursuit of happiness that makes America different and exceptional. The evil of our time is in the sacrificing of the best among us. After fighting this sacrificing and regaining our freedom, how can we then say that we have liberated men so they can sacrifice voluntarily? Is that really a choice to build a nation upon? Would it not be better to say that we have liberated men to pursue their highest joys and to live without guilt?

Sacrifice is not what the Founders sought in their pursuit of liberty. As Jefferson's example shows, they sought a "rational society" rich in freedom and enjoyment and intellectual stimulation.

We should champion man’s capacity for pleasure and happiness, for reason and clarity, not his capacity to suffer and give up. We should look to his inquisitiveness and his desire for exploration, not to an imperative to duty. Only then can a person find peace and happiness.”

(1)Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1787
(2)Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782
(3)Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1784
(4)Alf J. Mapp, Thomas Jefferson, a Case of Mistaken Identity
(5)Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782

Food, Inc.

When I was younger, milk was delivered to our home in bottles by a man in a truck. Was this natural milk, made by a cow and squeezed from her by hand that very morning? We thought so. Yet, then as today, almost everything was processed by machines. Even the cows were pumped by machines; and the milk had gone through a pasteurization process before being delivered by a truck that had been manufactured in a factory. Even the glass containers for the milk were made in a factory.

To get fresher milk and eggs back then, you might have had to live next door to a fellow who had a cow and chickens. Or you’d have to have your own cow and chickens. If you wanted fresh meat, you’d have to kill one of the animals with your own hands, cut them open, cut them up and put them on the grill right away…a pretty messy process. I’ve seen it done on many occasions. To avoid disease from spoiled food, you would need a refrigerator if you could afford one. The only refrigerators we could afford back then were little metal “boxes” where my father placed a block of ice. Today this is all done in factories so we don’t have to get our hands dirty, spill blood all over the place and work three times harder just to be able to eat.

Being a commentator today, even a self-appointed one like me, is a grave responsibility. It involves more than merely thinking emotionally about important issues. It involves understanding how ideas work in the real world and how basic premises influence the various views in the public arena. When I write about ideas that influence people, I should assume a high standard and be responsible about what I say. However, the same should apply to those other people who also comment on the issues. There is only one reality and because of this there is only one truth. We can’t all be right. Some of us are wrong.

For instance, my view of man is that he has the capacity and the need to use reason in order to survive. And as an economic participant in society, he must purchase the best products for the best prices. He must do business with people who offer products that provide tangible benefits at prices he can afford. This is the seldom-discussed “consumer” side of an economic transaction; not only does a thoughtful person want the capitalist to provide products that benefit him, but he insists on it. He will not do business with someone who is harming him.

This view of man is based on a more fundamental premise that each entity operates according to its own nature, according to the defining characteristics that it possesses. The view that man survives by means of reason does not imply that each man is rational in everything he does. Nor does it imply that man is infallible or omniscient. What it means is that each person has the capacity to use reason, and more importantly, he cannot survive without the use of reason. His reasoning capacity is his distinguishing characteristic; it is what makes him different from all other animals. And since survival is the key motivation for all living creatures, the need to survive requires that man use reason in his dealings with reality and with other men.

As I wrote in my blog post Anti-capitalism, the Evil Idea Part 3, “Capitalism is based upon a moral principle that each individual has a right to keep the product of his labor. That labor consists, not only of the precious time a person spends to make his product or deliver his services, but also of the value that his thinking is able to bring to the purchaser. The transfer of money in a voluntary trade makes it possible for the purchaser to get value from the seller and for the seller to purchase valuable products as well. This is not a zero-sum transaction; it is plus-plus.”

If you think correctly, you will also realize that reason is fundamental to man’s survival. This means that man can only survive when his reasoning capacity is allowed the freedom to function. This view leads to the development of man’s rights, especially property rights, capitalism and limited government.

Yet, today, we are told that capitalists cheat us and get rich with no economic consequence to themselves. All they need to do is use clever advertising and we’ll buy their worthless and unnecessary products. And, we are told, because of mass production, they are doing it on a massive scale. Unbridled capitalism is a scourge to the common man, they say. It takes his money, leaves him spent and then forces him to go to work so he can spend even more money on their unnecessary junk. The road to capitalism is strewn with the dead bodies of exploited workers and consumers. Everywhere there is devastation while the fat cats light their cigars with dollar bills. Is this true?

Those who hold this view of capitalism usually believe that there must be a select “few” men who can protect you from the damage done by greedy capitalists. You would be supported in this view by your teachers and university professors who would tell you that man’s senses are incapable of understanding true reality and only the state can ever really know what is good for the collective. Yet, the price of being protected by those few “specialists” is the sacrifice of your freedom and a limitation on the number of products that are available to you. This is the attitude of many government bureaucrats today and especially those on the left who want a “nanny” state to ensure that people are taken care of.

I think my view of man is the correct view. Man does indeed survive by means of reason and if you look around, wherever you see benefits to men in society, you see the work of reason and free markets. Tall buildings, even small buildings, super highways, rockets to space, restaurants with delicious foods, televisions, computers, iPhones, iPads, everything that today benefits your life directly was the result of human beings looking at reality and deciding how to create life-saving, time-saving, energy-saving and even pleasure-producing goods. And, since reason is necessary for your survival, you have to be perceptive enough to understand those benefits before you purchase them.

If your view of man is that he is evil or incompetent by nature, then your views on other issues that are derived from this view are cognitively wrong. In fact, any interpretation of reality based on those views, inevitably favors false solutions that do not work. In other words, if your fundamental premise is wrong in the real world, anything you do that is based upon that premise will also be wrong. For instance, the view of Marxists that capitalists are out to make a buck by any means is not verified by history. This view of the capitalist is “cognitively ill-founded” and leads to waging a constant war against capitalism that is destructive of real people. Indeed, this lie leads them to advocate economic and political systems that have been proven to be huge failures throughout history.

A good example of the correct view is provided by Andrew Bernstein in his book, The Capitalist Manifesto. It reveals an appreciation for the true nature of one capitalist named John D. Rockefeller and his accomplishments:

“…Rockefeller was a stickler for cutting costs. He built his refineries efficiently and saved on insurance. He employed his own plumbers and “almost halved the cost on labor, pipes, and plumbing material.” Barrels for oil cost $2.50 a piece; but by buying his own timber, kilns and wagons for transportation, Rockefeller reduced the cost per unit to 96 cents. He plowed his profits back into the business, buying bigger and better equipment, generating significant economies of scale. He hired chemists to develop hundreds of new by-products from each barrel of oil, including paint, varnish and lubricants.”(1)

Other commentators on Rockefeller would say that he cut prices in order to drive his competition out of business or to absorb them into his own business and that he was a thief who knew how to monopolize the industry of oil production. Which view is correct? I suggest you consider the views of the people who bought his kerosene product. They bought his products because it was in their self-interest; it was the moral thing to do.

Bernstein tells us “The final result of Rockefeller’s genius was inexpensive oil for the common man.”(2) Certainly, Rockefeller helped the common man of his time, but even today, he is helping you. Bernstein:

“…Rockefeller wrote one of his partners: ‘We must…remember we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good.’

Millions were now illuminating their homes for ‘one cent an hour’ with the inexpensive kerosene made available by Standard Oil – and for many Americans ‘working and reading became after-dark activities’ for the first time. By the 1880s oil stoves were widely used in the United States, particularly in rural regions, and also depended largely on Rockefeller’s company for affordable fuel. Later, Standard’s supply of cheap gasoline played a significant part in Henry Ford’s ability to dramatically upgrade American’s system of personal transportation….”(3)

As you can see, Bernstein’s view of Rockefeller and other capitalists is that they were benefactors who gave us a number of free gifts in return for the pennies we spent on their products. Not only did they provide products we needed but they also gave us additional benefits for which we did not pay. His kerosene product cost less than that provided by other companies and this made American’s buy more of it so they could read at night and, when Henry Ford came along, he made it possible for those same Americans to have the gift of liberated human energy through a new invention that transported them from place to place. It gave every American more freedom, more leisure, more pleasure, more privacy and even the ability to earn more money, all within the budget of the common man. The common man did nothing to receive these gifts; but he would never have received them without the existence of men like Rockefeller and Ford.

But, we are told, these men stole from us and made us poor. They were liars, thieves, cheats and lustful debauchers of the American fabric. In fact, Rockefeller’s company was forced by government to be split into a number of other companies, many with which we still deal, because the government thought he was creating a monopoly. This brings me to a similar attitude now being advanced regarding the food industry through a movie called Food, Inc., that I recently watched on my computer screen. This movie showed me the negative view of the people who run large food processing facilities and it reveals that the lie about capitalism continues in spite of evidence to the contrary.

Early scenes in the movie showed huge factories where Tyson chickens were processed. The intent was to “expose” the company for creating “artificial” chickens that are raised to be larger and processed according an automated process that reduces costs. Pictures of desiccated meat presumably sent for consumption, food poisoned with feces as well as the camera crew’s unsuccessful efforts to take shots of deliberately darkened rooms intended to signify secret doings and possible animal cruelty, populated the screen while commentators talked about shifty practices and low standards of food preparation as if they were reporting facts rather than carefully arranged images.

Yet, these scenes looked familiar to me. They reminded me of my own industry which was UPS transportation services (for 27 years). I recalled the smooth efficiency of a UPS sort facility where millions of packages are processed nightly and sent on their way to their recipients. I recalled that the UPS system, as efficient as it is, was still not perfect. Nightly some small percentages of packages were damaged which resulted in lost merchandise and damage claims.

I remembered the care that UPS took to notify customers of damaged packages and the ease with which a customer could receive a claim number and be reimbursed. This was customer service, the department where I spent many years issuing claim numbers and inspecting damaged packages in order to help our customers reduce future damages. I learned that even in highly mechanized industrial processes, every system has problems that, in the overall scheme of things, are minute in comparison to the overwhelming value provided by these processes.

The first thing you are told in the Food, Inc. film is that food production today is only about branding, not the quality of the food, not the authenticity of “natural” farm-raised animals, but advertising that creates a false image of quality, natural farming and close-to-the-earth values. The Food industry, according to Food, Inc. is making us believe that their food is all about American values; that it is clean and naturally made. Instead, they say, the truth is that most of our foods are made in huge factories and produced in large quantities at a rate that boggles the mind. Once you see what is really happening, they think, you will realize that Madison Avenue food branding is nothing but deception.

Not only is the branding for processed foods deceptive, they tell us, the quality of the food is poor and we are buying food that makes us sick, makes us fat, and is priced low because of farm subsidies. The alternative? Natural organic farming that produces quality foods in the old trusted ways.

What does all this have to do with John D. Rockefeller? Well, he and a few other fellows such as Carnegie, Ford and Casey made it possible for us to live today. They pioneered the development of the assembly line and reduced the cost of producing hundreds of different products while also increasing the quality of those products. Our lives are immeasurably better because of these processes and products.

But because our educators and politicians have a bias against capitalism, we believe the lies in movies such as Food, Inc. They tell us that capitalists are nothing more than unscrupulous scoundrels out for the buck. They have denigrated and ridiculed these people so much for so long that we’ve lost the ability to look at reality and see them for the great benefactors they were and are. And because we believe that man is an imperfect creature by his very nature, it is easy for us to conclude that the enemies of capitalism are right, man can't possibly create anything beneficial, man is essentially a fake.

Gordon Gekko is not a capitalist but a pardigm for the left’s view of capitalists. Because of the movies, many Americans have come to believe that the pardigm is reality. It seems so obvious to them that business people are nothing but a bunch of crooks that deserve ridicule and regulations. What a perfect scheme for the shakedown artists in government who want to demagogue the issue of capitalism and freedom.

True capitalists were and are hard working dynamos with the intelligence to creatively use capital investments, natural resources and factories to produce needed products of high quality delivered to your local store so you can drive a few blocks, pull out a little plastic card and cheaply buy those products that feed you. In fact these men were so successful that you can now cheaply buy a book manufactured through a similar highly efficient production process about “Robber Barons” and learn to hate the very men feeding you.

As for me, I have a different cognitive perspective. I look at the full meaning and history of capitalism and not at the propagandized version based on Marxist lies. I see the full value of capitalism and I admire the people who are creating these massive factories that feed so many millions of people. I am proud that I live in a country where so many people can be fed so nutritiously for so little expense. Today’s food processors are following in the tradition of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Jim Casey when they create these impressive facilities that reduce the prices of our food and make them more nutritious, not less. It is truly impressive and magnificent what Tyson has accomplished.

The technique of Food, Inc. is called "muckracking". Muckracking is based on the lie that there are unintended consequences to the practice of improving production. Muckrackers focus on a small part of a business process and distort its meaning and intent in order to gin up a scandal. The basic philosophy beneath muckracking is the Marxist idea that business people are charlatans who would sacrifice the well being of their customers for the sake of a buck.

But is it true that businessmen are willing to sacrifice peoples’ lives for the sake of making a profit? As with UPS sort facilities, most manufacturing processes are carefully planned and built to last. If a particular company is using poor practices, these practices show up on the products they make and the consumers will become aware of them as they compare those products to others on the market. As a business person, you would never want to sell something defective or improperly labelled because you know that lawsuits could develop and customers can stampede to other products if you are caught. The best regulator in the free market is the capitalist who is taught by the consumer what he wants, how he wants it and at what price. Government could never be as efficient.

And, equally as important, capitalism is based on the scientific process. By utilizing highly expert people in planning and designing manufacturing systems, producing highly nutritious foods through scientifically-developed knowledge, capitalists are able to participate in the process of constantly improving their products – in order to beat their competitors at gaining customers. This process has been going on since the advent of the capitalist age and the result is the ability of capitalists and customers to have better, more successful lives and constantly diminishing prices. In the process, they also happen to create jobs.

Capitalism encourages honesty and good intentions because it is based on the freedom of all parties, but especially on the freedom of the purchaser to buy products that are in his self-interest. An intelligent buyer must, as a matter of self-interest, buy products that are good for him. As a consumer, it is my responsibility to myself to know about the products I buy, how they are made and whether they are healthful. If I decide that something is not good for me, I will not buy it and no one can make a dime by deceiving me. This is called the free market and the most important person in that market is the intelligent consumer who decides for himself what is in his best interest. As Rockefeller correctly understood, I want it “cheap and good”.

When you see muckracking movies like Food, Inc., you should know that there are two sides to every story and this movie only shows the side of the anti-capitalists who produced it. Look to your own experience. Like myself, some of you have worked in factories and know them to be based on one goal, to provide the absolute best product for the lowest cost possible. I've worked in factories where they made brain probes and these facilities were hospital-room clean...and it was my job to make sure the product met the highest standards.

The muckrackers are haters of human progress. Their goal is not to help you live a better life but to diminish the value of the capitalist system in your mind. In effect, they are creating anti-branding in order to accomplish their anti-life goals. Were these people able to know a truly better way to make food, they would have started their own companies and competed against those they criticize. Since they can’t be adequate judges and since their basic premise is that man is incompetent to judge and decide, they can only deceive you about the great accomplishments of capitalism.

Consider what would happen if the public decided to stampede away from processed foods and toward “natural” foods. The increased demand for “organic” foods at lower prices would require that the makers of these foods find more advanced and more automated production processes such as those that Tyson Foods uses today.

And here’s the basic hypocrisy. This movie and the makers of it are doing nothing more than another form of “branding”. In fact, the movie is about creating a new (or old) brand known as “natural” foods which have been around for decades. Presumably, organic farming is better, more healthful and it can be delivered to you for twice the price.

(1)The Capitalist Manifesto, Andrew Bernstein, UBA, paperback
(2)Ibid
(3)Ibid

My Ignorant “Fascism” Rant

“…could we please not exploit the emotional elements of words like fascism and slavery? I find it an insult to think that I could be manipulated in any such way. I find it very hard to believe that intelligent grown men such as you seem to be drawn into your own somewhat childish conspiracy theories.”

This was written to me (and a friend) in an email by a progressive who took issue with a statement I made that progressives are leading us on a path toward fascism. This rebuttal was also made by an educated man who wants you to think that he is taking the intellectual high road, that he does not jump to conclusions and resort to conspiracy theories, that he is too high minded to stoop to the use of emotional phrases in order to scare and manipulate people (progressives never do that). Indeed, I must be a pretty ignorant person to be ranting the way I am.

This progressive thinks that his criticism exposes me and my friend as uncouth and ignorant, conspiracy theorists without intellectual training who merely jump to conclusions for the sake of insulting our opponents, but who have no education and no credibility. Anyone who argues that progressives are shadow fascists is a person not welcomed into intellectual discussions among the elite who know better. So anyone in the Tea Parties should be dismissed out of hand because they claim that fascism is the system of our government. What ignorant dolts we are.

But are the warnings that fascism is coming really the rantings of an ignorant person? Or are they a warning based on solid historical analysis that identifies the fundamental premises of the progressives and the movement of ideas through out history? In fact, philosophical analysis, if done properly can teach us alot and can help us avoid the mistakes of the past. What about intelligent books such as “Liberal Fascism” by Jonah Goldberg or the classic scholarly work, “The Ominous Parallels” by Dr. Leonard Peikoff? In fact, scholars were warning about our fascist tendencies even during the early Roosevelt Presidency (a time when progressives were praising fascism) and some very intelligent economists, such as Ludwig von Mises and others, had said as much in their writings decades ago. Why do the progressives want to get rid of this “fascist” charge?

Certainly, the word is charged emotionally. When you hear the word “fascist”, you think of Adolph Hitler and his genocides, you think of Mussolini and his fascist dictatorship and the atrocities committed during World War II. You think of other dictatorships such as in Spain, Iraq, Cuba and Venezuela and you think about a group of people that historians have made, because they rightly deserved it, into the most evil and hateful men in history. Don’t you even think about connecting these men to today’s progressives who only want to establish a fair balance between economic regulations and freedom. Nope, that’s not them.

But some progressives are ignorant of history themselves. They don't understand their own place in the past, their own contributions to the decline of liberty. They think that progressivism is just as good as Americanism, in fact, better, more intelligent, more scientific and more benign than those who somehow still think that capitalism is the best system for people. They are brilliant, intelligent people who somehow have never noticed that at one time progressives fostered some of the most heinous ideas. Euthanasia, eugenics and racial purity are progressive ideas that history has forced them to disavow. Progressives could not be about that. They just want to make society better and they have intelligent ways to do that. Well, we'll get to that.

In fact, I’ve been called ignorant so many times for bringing up the words fascist and Hitler that you’d think there is a method to the criticism. It is part of the Alinsky strategy of ridiculing one’s opponent. If you can convince people that an opponent is hateful, racist, evil, vengeful…any of the terrible things that ignorant people do, well, then you’ve eliminated what may otherwise be a strong opponent.

So, let’s look at history. I will try to condense many centuries of thought and debate into just a few words so we can see the essentials and come to an understanding of why the charge of “fascist” against the progressives is indeed, a valid one made by intelligent people who just happen to understand history.

The overall goal of progressives has been to establish government control over society where the government regulates all private and business activity for the sake of “the common good.” Some more honest progressives of the past have thought that government could indefinitely maintain a balance between private and public interests and that this system does not have to lead to dictatorship...even though, because of those evil men, it has led to dictatorship in the past. Though this progressive goal of a mixed economy is often tinged with kind words about doing good for people who otherwise would die, the basic premise of the progressives is the false view that capitalism is ineffective at solving “social” problems, that capitalism, being based on private self-interest, is not able to advance collective interests. We can discuss these issues forever but the basic truth is that, no matter how nice they appear to be, all progressives believe that capitalism fails, that it is exploitive, that it cannot meet the needs of people, and that profit is evil, or at the very least, it needs to be regulated for the sake of the greater good. I, and many others, have elsewhere taken on the fallacies and lies that these views represent. What is important here is that progressives and their coercive measures against private individuals fall within the general principle of “statism”; the idea that the state is the principal component of society that should regulate private activities for the sake of the “public good.”

The rationale for the takeover of private activity was first propagated by some ancient Greeks. The Greeks held that democracy was ineffective during war and that a strong central control was necessary to get a city through an emergency of this kind. This required the establishment of a “tyrant” (who controlled everything) and the suspension of all freedoms until the war had been won. At that point, the city could once again reestablish democratic rule. This is the genesis of our modern day “tyrannies”.

Yet, even some of the Greeks wondered why people wanted to return to democracy when the “tyranny” had been so efficient. Couldn’t a tyranny work during peacetime? In fact, Plato’s recommended “Republic” was a tyranny of the philosophers where the most intelligent men controlled and planned all elements of society in order to advance a common and greater good. Plato’s ideas were forged out of the anger and despair he felt over seeing his beloved mentor and teacher Socrates drink the hemlock at the behest of “the people” who voted that he should die. Plato’s work has served as a blueprint for dictatorships ever since it was written so many centuries ago.

Later, as time went on, through the influence of philosophers such as Hegel and Nietzsche among others, the idea that dictatorship might be a better way of solving social problems during peace time began to gain support. In order to advance this idea, the supporters of “tyranny” began to attack democratic rule as inefficient and wasteful and they idealized the strong leaders who possessed a unique speaking ability that motivated large numbers of people to work together for collective goals. The idea of “collective goals” was a myth, of course. There is no such thing as a collective, there are only individuals. Collectivism always requires that force (or ostracism) be imposed upon people who refuse to go along. But this didn’t matter to the collectivists who saw the idea as a way of corralling human beings and forcing them to work toward what they considered to be the good (which many times was nothing more than their personal enrichment).

The result was the idea that “power” in the hands of a few was the most efficient way to advance civilization. It was thought that powerful leaders had the knowledge and the courage necessary to identify the “social” goals upon which a society should be based. An outgrowth of these ideas was the establishment of social systems called dictatorships. At one time, the term “dictatorship” was considered the latest trend, a new advanced way to get things done in a world with so many problems. This was not too long ago. Of course, it doesn't take a scholar to realize what the people had talked themselves into; they opened the door for scoundrels like Hitler and Mussolini who pretended to be those "strong men".

Because of the arguments of the philosophers about the value of a “dictatorship”, the bulk of university scholars, intellectuals and even the masters of the arts became vocal supporters of dictatorship. A tremendous propaganda machine was built up that made this movement toward a more powerful government inevitable. This was the birth of the progressive movement. All the greatest minds were talking of the glorious future that could be had if the progressives could just get rid of the inefficient ideas of the past such as individual rights, capitalism, profit, etc. and mimick the political ideas of Mussolini and other brilliant leaders from Europe.

Throughout the various periods of progressive propaganda, parliamentary societies loosely based upon democratic controls over power, began to be criticized as weak and ineffectual. They could not accomplish the lofty goals that were possible under tyrannies, it was thought. The progressives argued that selfishness had been let loose by democratic governments; the good of society as a whole was being ignored for the sake of “petty” profits.

Mussolini was considered a genius because he came up with an entirely new way to create efficiencies in society. In early propaganda, fascism was the coming new way. The progressives argued that it would be so efficient that it would replace capitalism. It would, they thought, create a society that was even more efficient because it would eliminate the elements of capitalism that were wasteful. Mussolini was a master at “making the trains run on time”. How did he do it? By means of establishing government bureaucracies of very "competent" men who made sure “social” goals had precedence for all individuals and businesses.

A strong leader like Mussolini was a man who could excite the passions of the people and, by decree and regulation, ensure that businesses were making good products that the government approved. In short, a fascist system is one where private property is in the hands of the business owners but is regulated by the government, presumably to ensure that such property (factories and machines) is used to advance the goals of the collective as defined by the leader.

Capitalism on the other hand, was seen as a system of waste and fraud. Businessmen, it was thought, only cared about profit. They were considered to be scoundrels who did not care about quality…they were just out for the buck, and they didn’t care about the greater good, about social goals, about ensuring that the people were well served. Because capitalists took profits, those profits were considered wasteful and it was thought the government could better use those profits to establish social services rather than have that money spent by the lustful and materialistic tycoons.

As it turned out the lofty goals of the dictators turned into the need for total power. In order to accomplish the common good they had to ridicule, disenfranchise and murder those who would oppose them; and they had to control the means of production in order to build the armaments necessary to gain new territories; in order to “save” the people against its enemies. And the economic decline caused by their regulations became so obvious that they had to propagandize even more violently against capitalism in order to cover their own tracks – it was not long before prosecutions, imprisonment and purges became necessary. The idea that only a dictator could run an efficient peace time society became the idea that only a dictator could eliminate the so-called enemies that were thwarting progress – including internal enemies. Throughout this period, there was near unanimous support for fascism among intellectuals and journalists. They argued that before the dictator could establish universal medical care, income re-distribution, an improvement of the race, and other benefits, the masses had to dutifully sacrifice for the nation in war.

The crowning monument to dictatorship was the 20th Century where millions of people were killed because, presumably, they did not adequately contribute to the goals of the collective. After this bloodbath, the progressives scurried into the depths and waited. Over time, they emerged with new colors (blue instead of red), but without changing a single basic premise. They still believed capitalism was evil, but they stopped overtly challenging it; they chose to seek “a balance” between private interests and public interests. They still believed in collectivism, but talked only about “the people”, the tribe, the group, etc. They still believed in a strong central control, but only discussed democratic action to achieve a better future. They still believed in a strong leader and focused their efforts on “Presidential Power”. They still hated individual rights but started talking about entitlements paid for by the government (the taxpayer). And instead of advocating violent revolution, they became "liberals", people who worked within the system to bring about the same goals as violent revolution, eventual, incrementally instituted, collective action (dictatorship). The progressives grew more powerful merely by changing their language, eliminating the use of their old propaganda terms, and by divorcing themselves from all the negatives associated with their now dead child, dictatorship. And, in an even more brazen twist, they began calling their political enemies “fascists”. Yes, they are so intelligent that they must call their opponents by the very name that they once considered to be the beacon of a shiny bright future for man.

Today’s progressives are operating within the tradition of this movement toward a more powerful government. Over a century ago, many progressives bought into the ideas that promoted fascism. Where Mussolini, through masterful political moves, gained control of the means of production, today the progressives engage in masterful political moves such as backroom meetings, political payoffs, promises of jobs, bashing capitalism and shakedowns of businessmen. Although they’ve educated many Americans to think that fascism was about racism and accomplishing evil intentions through treachery and force, at one time they praised Mussolini’s fascism and sold it to people as a great idea. In America, some progressives even praised Hitler before his military violations and his genocide were known about.

What was so good about fascism that it would make early progressives call it their own? Why did they once use language that glorified dictatorship, collectivism, statism and other coercive “isms” in the past…and why do they now refuse to use those words to describe themselves? They still believe that you can establish a just society by means of force imposed on individuals. They still think that collectivism and re-distribution of income are the only ways to foster the collective goals that have never been accomplished by their coercive means. In their very small minds, they do not realize that their intentions can never be accomplished by the means they advocate. They have lost the connection between their thoughts and reality. But more importantly, they believe in fascist ideas because they know (consciously or sub-consciously) that coercion is the only way that they can gain control of peoples' lives, the only way that they can establish their dictatorship. They’ve just don’t call it dictatorship; they call it "democracy".

Today, what was once fascism is now “the government/business alliance” that is being fostered, promoted, and put into place by progressives. All current government takeovers and bailouts are derivatives of this fascist principle. Cap and Trade, Health Care, the automotive takeover, financial regulations, card check, extra-constitutional czars...all of these moves by the current administration are government control and management over private businesses; fascism. The fact is, today’s progressives believe in the same body of fundamental ideas as the fascists, the same goals, the same methods and the same anti-capitalism as Mussolini and his fascists. Except today they don’t call it fascism. They call it service to society.

They call it “change”.

Of course, many progressives today, consider themselves much more refined and educated than men in the past and they tell us they understand that dictatorship can lead to wars and genocide and they assure us that they are not at all in favor of such un-civilized behavior. Draw a conclusion about anything and they'll ask you for the study that proves it and since there is no study, just your considered and educated judgment, well, they're too educated to ever draw their own conclusions. Hume has told them there is no connection between fact and judgment. It's all a matter of consensus and there is no consensus among progressive intellectuals that fascism is related to progressivism. Today progressivism is not about fascism, they tell us gently. It is about striking a balance (emphasis on “balance”) between private action and public action, establishing a fair mix of interventionist policies and free markets that can be maintained indefinitely without ever plunging society into the depths of barbarism and plunder and murder – not ever again. They are really just good guys trying to make things better. Don't you feel better?

Fascism hidden beneath protestations of love for mankind is still fascism by any other name. And fascism has always had one fatal problem. It has never and will never work. Fascism is the refuge of the pragmatist, the progressive and the neo-conservative who all claim to be after the “common good” but who practice methods that achieve destruction. The economic controls fostered by fascism distort the operations of otherwise free markets. These distortions cause economic pain to people and these problems necessitate more controls to fix the problems created by previous controls. Fascists seldom remove controls…they always increase controls that, with each iteration, become more powerful and more onerous over time. At the end of the fascist state is economic collapse and, you guessed it, dictatorship.

Why is this so? A fascist state, like that which we have today, as it destroys more freedom incrementally, drags society into increased levels of immorality, hatred of values, envy, group warfare (as different groups vie to be favored by government), graft, corruption, racism, theft, shakedowns, bailouts, czars with extra-constitutional powers, until, like the Roman Empire, the productive people are gone. Society becomes a mixture of those who live in poverty with the leaders who live in opulence (remember the dark ages that followed the collapse of Rome). Do you wonder why Mussolini was hanged by the very same people who once worshipped his magnificent charismatic control over them?

So, the question to ask is, are the people who warn us that we are on a road to fascism, really just a bunch of uneducated idiots who use such charges for emotional political effect? Or are they screaming out that disaster is coming if we continue on the same path as the fascists in the past?

What do you think?

The Tea Party Protesters – the Left’s New Inferior “Race”

Why does the Left hate the Tea Party protesters? Why do they call these protesters fascists, racists, violent people and tea baggers (a sexual slur)? How is it that they are able to get away with these spurious insults when, in another time and place, they would be the first to protest such insults made by others? I think it is very simple. The Left is using the same thought process against Tea Partiers that racists use against other groups. Notice, I did not call the left racist. I am not “name-calling”. I said they are using the same thought process as racism. Let me explain.

Consider what real racism consists of. Racism is the idea that individuals with certain physical characteristics also contain “racial characteristics” such as ignorance, stupidity or inferiority. It is the practice of assigning negative “markers” to groups of people that are seen as threats or otherwise hated.

Racism is a type of discrimination that has exactly the same motive and result as does the attitude of the left toward the Tea Party people. To the leftists, the Tea Party people are the new inferior "breed", the people who deserve ridicule and exclusion from society because they are a threat to the "Master" establishment. Their collective markers are the characteristics that the leftists invent in order to insult them; such as uneducated, Astroturf, racist, bigots, etc. Indeed, the left’s discrimination toward the Tea Party protesters has the same motive, the same method, the same hatred, the same unfairness, the same collectivism, the same insults and the same results...which are isolation, unpopularity and exclusion: in a word, it is the same thought process as racism.

What is the connection between racist Dixiecrats and today’s left? Both groups think in terms of collectives, not individuals. The only difference between the two is that the hated collective for the left, the new hated “race” is made up of individuals in the Tea Party Movement.

In ridiculing the Tea Party Movement, the left is looking for a scapegoat to blame for its own mistakes. Leftists today lead a very precarious existence for several reasons. Their government solutions are not working. The jobs bill has failed, the American people do not support the Health Care bill, and their poll numbers keep going down…but worst of all those Tea Party people keep raising issues for which the left has no answer. Tea Partiers tell us that the left does not deserve the moral upper hand that it assumes for itself. The Tea Partiers say that the left’s coercive activities violate the Constitution. Such criticisms are so alien to their thought process and, frankly, they didn’t expect to be opposed on such grounds. So they call such arguments reactionary, fascist and right wing.

But that doesn’t help their insecurity. The Tea Party people won't stop saying that it was the progressives who caused the financial collapse, not capitalism. They say that socialism has failed due to the Community Reinvestment Act (that caused faulty loans to be approved) and the Federal Reserve (that caused the housing bubble). In fact, the Tea Party people insist that the sub prime financial debacle was a direct result of the left’s re-distribution schemes not the fault of a free market.

But there is a more important issue that encourages massive discrimination against people in the Tea Party Movement. It is not only that the Tea Party people stand opposed to the loss of their individual rights, certainly this is true, but consider the tremendous amount of power and money that the progressives and their oligarchic friends stand to lose if they are defeated politically. Though they know they will rule over a diminished economy, it is still a huge economy made up of some of the most talented and productive people in the world – and what is most disheartening for the left is that those very productive people are, in large measure, in the Tea Party...and they don't like the idea of being enslaved.

Think about how this complicates their new form of “political” profiling (as opposed to racial profiling) and how they define the enemies of society; not only does the American public not want the left's massive programs that are intended to benefit and enrich politicians and oligarchs; but the left has spent decades of taxpayer money concocting huge problems such as CO2 emissions, insurance company profits and financial “greed” in order to ‘sell’ their re-distribution scams; not only have they invested huge sums of their own money (that they made from selling short in the stock market) but they've also invested stolen money from government grants and other boondoggles, and, after all of that investment, they may not be able to enrich themselves after all. Can you feel the anger building?

If anything will generate hate among looters and plunderers it is the tremendous problem created when the very productive people who are being looted do not buy into the “sacrifice” scam. This means huge losses to the leftists. Do you wonder why they are passing their legislation in spite of the opposition of the American people? Do you wonder why they are verbally attacking the Tea Parties? They must engage in massive amounts of vitriol and hatred because there is too much on the line…so much that, well, there are going to be some very unhappy "investors" if the leftist schemes fail - people who don’t like to be disappointed, if you know what I mean.

So, like the Dixiecrats of the old south who once hated and ridiculed Blacks, the left must now accuse the Tea Parties of corrupting social cohesion, because for them it is true, the society they need, a society ripe for exploitation, may not actually be so ripe for exploitation. Those pesky Tea Party people have stood up against their plundering of the American economy.

So now you understand why the left doesn’t argue on issues but instead attacks the opposition with meaningless and pointless insults. That’s all they know because they’ve lost the mantle of morality long ago. Their highest level of morality is plotted across a negative scale consisting of a community organizer who teaches them to use ridicule against their enemies and that the end (theft) justifies the means (corruption); and a politician who schemes against productive businesses for a campaign contribution; or of a union organizer whose thuggish tactics force people to join unions so he can continue to plunder his depleted pension plan; or of a hedge fund manager who organizes a timely flight from the stock market in order to steal the savings of the American people.

I'm certain that I will be accused of gross unfairness in criticizing the corruption of the left while ignoring the "good things" they are trying to do. Some of this criticism will come from the "moderates" of today who think Obama is nothing more than a good guy trying to do the right thing. I think these people have their heads in the sand and, for that very reason, they are the most intolerant of all when it comes to the Tea Parties. These are the "fair minded" people who are "too busy" to pay attention to what is happening in our country and because so they don't know the difference between a Karl Marx and a Thomas Jefferson (and they don't want to know), or a Van Jones and a Glenn Beck; they see the issues as an argument between extreme personalities and nothing more. They think the Tea Party people are too concerned about what Rush Limbaugh says (who is not a Tea Party member) or they think our problem is that we spend too much time watching Fox News. For these people the problems in our nation are caused by people who just "hate" the President, not because he is a radical bent on total domination of their lives but because he is a Democrat (or black). They are missing the point.

They can't conceive of the idea that some Americans oppose the President, not out of hate, but because they understand that re-distribution does not work and never has worked in history. In fact, the true "moderate" today is the person who stands against everything Obama does. This is because everything he does is re-distribution and it is his policies that are at the extreme. There is no malice in recognizing that, and no radicalism, except in the sense that radical thinking is thinking in terms of fundamentals.

I've written before about the fact that the people to whom money is re-distributed by government never spend that money as sensibly as the person who first earns it. And quite often, the earners save that money so it can be invested in businesses and create jobs while government recipients merely spend it on consumption. The same principle applies to the oligarchs who steal the taxpayer's money through the various government/business alliances of the politicians. That money, obtained by corrupt means, will most often be invested in poorly managed factories, hiring unconcerned employees, producing poor quality products that no one wants.

So when someone thinks that the progressives are merely trying to make things better, they betray the fact that they don't think; they are their own worst enemies because they are unable to recognize the fallacies inherent in re-distribution schemes. A good example would be someone who says he has a solution to the financial crisis. We should make banks pay some of their profits into a program that gives loans to poor people so they can buy homes. This would help people and improve the economy says the advocate of this scheme. Yet, he ignores the fact that this program caused the financial meltdown in the first place and doing more of it would not improve things but make things worse. The idea of taking money from the owners of productive companies is a violation of their rights and it gives money to people who feel entitled to it but don't have the pride of having earned it. This is the immorality that Obama supporters completely overlook.

Progressives have only one solution to our nation's problems: make productive people pay so others may benefit...and this is the very sort of "solution" that never works - and it causes our nation's problems. It is this sort of solution, and many more like it proposed by the Obama administration (financial regulation, Cap and Trade, Health Care, and more) that are bringing about the biggest looting spree in the history of our country. The real solution offered by the Tea Parties is to stop all of this foolish spending and let the people solve the nation's problems through trade and good business practices. So who's the radical? Who's looking out for the nation? The Tea Party protesters whose opinions the leftists want to silence and ignore.

The Tea Party protesters are being discriminated against unfairly because they are standing on the ramparts to fight for their freedom. These courageous people are the left's new "inferior race" that won't be shoved to the back of the bus by hateful verbal thugs.

What the progressives have failed to understand is that in a free society, every person is an individual and he cannot be looted if he and many others stand up for individual rights. What the left fails to understand is that an educated citizenry is the last stand against thievery and plunder; the Tea Parties are the last hope for civilization.

Will you join us?