Articles in Folder “Threats to Western Civilization”:
2559.\\ The Greenroom » The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
This, folks, is what it looks like when government is doing too much. Government is too big. Some of us have been pointing this out for decades, but I think more and more of the Americans who don't pay much attention, as long as their lives don't have to change too much, are now waking up and realizing that government has gotten big enough to actually fulfill Michelle Obama's promise: to actually change our lives.The truth is, Americans don't want government to change our lives. Government that does less is what more and more people are realizing we need. We don't want government that's big enough to force us to buy health insurance - or to make lesser and cheaper medical treatments the "norm" in order to save "society's" resources. We don't want government that thinks it has some reason to care how many rooms there are in our homes, and how they are heated and cooled. We don't want government that's big enough to force talk radio, TV, or internet content into a state-approved homeostasis between "left" and "right." We don't want government that can kill our jobs by making it too expensive to employ us. We certainly don't want government that employs members of a thuggish service employees' union and caters to their demands - demands that can only be satisfied by confiscating more and more from the private sector's producers: those to whom the same union employees display a surly and unhelpful demeanor when the taxpayers have the misfortune to need to do business with the government.
The ugly face of big government is plastered across every facet and every communication medium of modern life, here in 2010. What we need to realize is that it isn't possible to have big government that looks and acts any other way. This is it: this is what activist government - government that won't let us go back to our lives as usual - looks like. The time has come for government to stop "fixing" things.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Big Government, Congress, HotAir, Liberty, Michelle Obama, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2553.\\ Access to Information is Not a Fundamental Right
In times such as these, where more people believe in alien abduction than have faith in the fidelity of the Federal Government, it is often with distress and alarm that I encounter news reports of such utter nonsense that it literally causes heart palpitations.
I shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, that the great intellectual powerhouse that is common wisdom believes the things it believes. My 4 year old believes that Lost should be on every day, for instance. My 13 year old believes that any logical argument can be countered with 'whatever'. I'll lay odds that if you polled the world on who best represents the best hope for mankind they might just pick a fictional character. I would choose Jack Bauer, but that is beside the point.
To paraphrase Marcus Aurelius, it is pretty ridiculous to be surprised at anything which happens in this life. So it comes as no great shock, although with a meaningful level of distaste, that 4 out of 5 people polled around the world believe that the Internet, and access to it, is a fundamental human right.
I'll wait just a moment to permit Locke to finish turning in his grave. Excellent. Thank you John. And now allow me to disabuse 80% of the masses of their silly notions of 'rights'.
I think that in 2010 we must allow for the premise that rights devolve into two general categories: Natural and Civil (or Legal). Natural rights exist existentially. Humans are born with natural rights derived from God or Nature or the Cosmos or Nothing or whatever you believe in. These rights exist as a result of our existence. They are universal, are not granted by anyone or any group, cannot be revoked, cannot be given up voluntarily, cannot be modified or added to. They simply are and they are inalienable. The right to exist would be the classic one in this category. By virtue of being human and coming into this world, we have the right to live.
The Romans gave us an early sense of the right to our own imagination, conscience or soul: "the body indeed is subjected and in the power of a master, but the mind is independent, and indeed is so free and wild, that it cannot be restrained even by ... the body." And while Seneca was probably not the first to ever conceive of the notion, he may have been the first in the West to apply natural rights to the issue of slavery in order to argue against it. He pointed out that slavery was something imposed on the body from outside. It wasn't something you could do to yourself because at the heart of it, the freedom of the soul is an inalienable right. Slavery, therefore, could not exist as an extension of nature but only as an artificial socio-political construct imposed upon people. Seems obvious now, but it made him pretty unpopular since it basically argued that no man ought to be enslaved.
Inalienable rights were also described in early Sharia Law. The Islamic formulation sounds rather familiar and prevented "the right to take away from his subjects certain rights which inhere in his or her person as a human being." Fascinating that it predates John Locke by 1000 years.
Speaking of the Enlightenment, this is where we get some of our greatest thinkers on the subject of natural rights. But I'd go back a bit further and quote Martin Luther on the subject. Luther enhances the notion of the freedom of conscience and applies it to religion: "Since, then, belief or unbelief is a matter of every one's conscience, and since this is no lessening of the secular power, the latter should be content and attend to its own affairs and permit men to believe one thing or another, as they are able and willing, and constrain no one by force." Boom. Separation of Church and State and the liberty of conscience.
Thomas Hobbes took a slightly different view. He argued that the single natural right was that of self-interest. Or as he puts it in Leviathan: "to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto." The right to life and conscience naturally flows from the innate right of liberty that we are born with. By having the latter you guarantee the former two.
John Locke gives us three inalienable rights. We have the right to life in which everyone is entitled to live once they are created. We also have the right to liberty in which everyone is entitled to do anything they want to so long as it doesn't conflict with the first right (i.e. you don't have the right to kill someone and violate their right to life). Lastly we have the right to estate or property whereby everyone is entitled to own all they create or gain through gift or trade so long as it doesn't conflict with the first two rights. I think Locke would pour cold water on the notion that music or software on the Internet is and ought to be owned by everybody who can download it. It is owned by the person who created it by natural right. Nothing you can do will ever change that.
The Scottish Enlightenment thinker Francis Hutcheson worded it slightly differently: "Thus no man can really change his sentiments, judgments, and inward affections, at the pleasure of another; nor can it tend to any good to make him profess what is contrary to his heart. The right of private judgment is therefore unalienable." You quite simply cannot by any will or force give up your right to liberty. It is therefore inalienable. Since you can't voluntarily give it up, it is there whether anyone agrees or not.
Thomas Paine added to the notion that natural rights cannot be granted by fiat or ruling or charter since this would imply that they could be revoked by the same instrument that granted them (i.e. a Constitution). As he says: "It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect -- that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. ... They...consequently are instruments of injustice."
Which leads us to the second category of rights: those that are not natural but constructed and agreed to by compact between men, groups, tribes or between the ruled and the rulers.
I'll call them civil rights. These are derived from legal constructs and are based on customs, laws or actions by legislatures. The classic example is the right to vote. You're not born with this as part of your innate human nature, it is granted by a state. It is only applicable in a state. If the state went away, so would the right. They are relative. They depend on a context established by culture and politics. The right to vote would have no meaning in a society where there was no voting.
Civil rights are artificial. They exist only as a result of the social compact between people. There is no right to go to school if the school doesn't exist because we are stone age homo sapiens in small nomadic tribes in the savannah. In that context, the right to school would only exist by permit of some law or other element of the social compact as it is in our society today. My test for what constitutes a civil right versus a natural right is simply to ask would that right exist in the absence of modern civilization? What rights do Jack Shephard and the other surviors of Oceanic 815 have while they're on the island? Certainly not the right to Medicare. They have natural rights only. As the series progresses, they form various types of social compacts to establish other rudimentary forms of civil rights such as voting on where to go and what to do. But as a whole, the characters have only their natural rights. If the right is temporary or based on some grant in the form of a law, charter or act of legislature, if it exists only within a certain socio-political context, then it is a civil or legal right, not a natural or fundamental right.
The early Sharia Law granted various civil rights. In the Constitution of Medina written in the mid-600s, the rights were specifically enumerated. In fact, that document describes rights for various groups and classes of people. It provides various civil rights to non-Muslims, for example: "The security (dhimma) of God is equal for all groups; non-Muslim members have equal political and cultural rights as Muslims. They will have autonomy and freedom of religion; non-Muslims will take up arms against the enemy of the Ummah and share the cost of war. There is to be no treachery between the two; non-Muslims will not be obliged to take part in religious wars of the Muslims." Pretty straight forward and rather progressive. One wonders what the world be like today if they had adhered to that formulation.
At any rate, the Islamic example highlights another aspect of civil rights. They have various subdivisions and subclasses that differ between contexts. There is, for example, a distinction between positive rights and negative rights. A positive right grants permission to do something or receive something. Receiving welfare would be a positive right. Negative rights grant permission to do nothing or receive nothing. This the right to be left alone, an entitlement to non-interference. The right against robbery is a negative right. However, because civil rights are contextual, some rights are both positive and negative depending on the political context. In the United States voting is a negative right, that is, you have the right to vote but you don't have to vote. In other countries voting is a positive right. You have the right to vote and you do not have the right to not vote. You must vote or face a penalty.
There are other classes of civil rights. There are individual rights, group rights, liberty rights and claim rights. There are even other formulations entirely of civil rights. The most popular one divides them into a hierarchical set of three 'generations' of rights, each dependent upon the previous generation. The point is that all of these are established only via social compact between peoples. They don't exist without that government or charter or law.
Yes, various historians and philosophers have argued that natural rights don't exist at all or they do exist but only when civil rights are first established. Thomas Aquinas sliced and diced the meanings of natural and positive civil rights. Edmund Burke, Rousseau and Jeremy Bentham are among those who think natural rights are rubbish and any right to life can only exist when laws permit it. There are others who quibble about the natural right of a man do something versus the natural ability of him to do it. I would say that it is a complicated matter. But what cannot be denied is the basic principle of the right to liberty of one's own conscience. No law granted by any authority can violate this right to thought. It exists in nature, it exists without government, without law and without agreement. It is involuntary and inalienable. Given that this 'natural' right exists regardless of context, I cannot but endorse the notion that there are at least two categories of rights. Even if there is only a single natural right, there is still at least two categories.
Which brings me to why I felt compelled to write this history of philosophy lecture. There is no natural right to the Internet or the information on it. Let me repeat, humans do not have a fundamental right to the Internet. The Internet only exists because it was invented by man. Access to it only exists because governments have permitted that access. The information on it is only consumable because the owners of that information permit its use. Whether any of this is desirable or progressive or needed is irrelevant. The fact remains that access to information on the Internet (or off it for that matter) is permitted and that permission can be revoked at will. It is most certainly not a fundamental right.
You may even argue that it isn't a right at all. If it is any kind of right, it is a civil right. And within that category it may still not even be a right. If it is at all, it is not a First Generation or even Second Generation right. It may be covered under the Third Generation right to communicate but even that seems a stretch since you can communicate without the Internet. In any event, none of the Second or Third Generation rights are even universally recognized or granted. Even the First Generation rights are applicable to only a fraction of the human race. It is entirely dependent on law, politics, policy and societal context.
There is no right to own a dog. You may own a dog, it isn't illegal, but you do not have a right to it that is enshrined in and protected by founding documents. The act of owning a dog is enabled or prevented by local laws. I would argue that the same principle applies to the Internet. It is a medium. You have no more 'right' to a medium than you do to a dog. Secondly, there is nothing that the Internet provides that cannot be obtained some other way. You don't have a 'right' to watch Hulu or chat with perverts on Chatroulette. You can get medical advice without WebMD. You can learn history and philosophy without ChrisCam. Sure the Internet makes it easier to get information or communicate. But in the same way a car makes it easier for me to get to New York, I have no entitlement to a car. I can walk to New York.
Perhaps there are societies out there (looking at you Scandinavia) where the social compact includes an entitlement or civil right to a car (or free access to the Internet). This is likely to also be the society where the civil rights are so vast and so enumerated in such detail so as to adversely impact the natural right to liberty. You can already see some of this in our own society. Recently passed hate crime legislation makes it worse to commit a crime when thinking something that is disagreeable to the majority of the society. It may intend well, but it treads on the natural right to liberty of conscience and liberty of thought upon which the entire social edifice is built. Such a society cannot, therefore, endure. It will eventually contravene natural rights to such a degree that it will collapse by decay or armed insurrection. Our Founders understood that. That is why they constructed our social compact to protect natural rights as the bedrock of the system. Violate those rights and the rest is meaningless.
The Internet and/or access to it is not a fundamental right. Neither is it a civil right. The act of attempting to make it so will by its very rationale trample on the natural rights which underpin the civil ones.
TAGGED AS: Aquinas, Civil Rights, Edmund Burke, Hegel, Hutcheson, John Locke, Liberty, Lost, Luther, Natural Rights, Paine, Rights, Rousseau
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PERMANENT LINK2547.\\ I Don't Usually Post A Self-Fulfilling News Story, But...
I did so earlier today it seems. Apparently Berlin has refused, in no uncertain terms, to bail out the Hellenic Republic. That isn't good news for Greek national solvency, terrible news for the rest of the PIGS, and ultimately a complete embarrassment for the European common currency.
What it portends for what remains of Western Civilization is still in the future. The only question is how far in the future that definition can be pushed. My money is on a total meltdown before 2012.
2545.\\ The Case For Deficits and Against Spending
Just go read it. It makes sense.
Best bit:
"Unseen is how much higher our wages would be if our federal minders weren't spending over $3 trillion per year, and how very different and varied our collective employment outlook would be if our productive gains stayed in the private sector as opposed to the bloated government sector. It's said that government spending is compassionate, but what is compassionate about politicians spending money not their own?
If it's agreed that governments have no resources of their own, would readers prefer a balanced budget of $3 trillion plus, or a trillion-dollar deficit amid $1.5 trillion of spending? The answer here seems pretty simple. Since dollars are dollars, and investors don't seem concerned with the deficit, the most economically stimulative path would be to continue running deficits while greatly reducing the level of federal taxation and spending."
2544.\\ Coming to America: Crisis
Niall Ferguson's article in the Financial Times yesterday cuts to the core of the apparently insurmountable fiscal disaster we face. He repeats Larry Summers rhetorical question "How long can the world's biggest borrower remain the world's biggest power?"
I think it is absolutely fitting that the final implosion of Western Civilization is starting in the very birthplace of liberal democracy. Greece is doomed, that much seems increasingly clear. The dominoes will fall across the Club Med region. Berlin and Paris and London will attempt to right the ship, but it is a matter of rearranging positions in the lifeboat. The ship is lost. Europe has been on the slippery slope for years and is now in a headlong slide down the hill to ruin.
America seems next. Our collapse would make Greece's look like a minor nuisance. It seems pretty clear by now that the current one-term Administration is about as capable and up to the task of saving America as my 4 year old son. Unlike my son, however, Obama lacks modesty. He'll be the one at the helm loudly proclaiming how he, the second coming of Christ, did away with all the terrible things George Bush did as the bridge submerges and the stern rises out of the ocean. The reality is that while we might have been set on course to strike the iceberg by the previous Administration, the current one grabbed the wheel, locked in the course and put us a flank speed all the while loudly strutting and clucking about how great things will be because they took over the captain's chair.
It is, in short, a fast approaching disaster of epic proportions. Forget 1929, I'm talking 476 here. From this inflection point outward in the timeline, we will become a shell, a joke, America in name only. We'll be ruled by oligarchs and corporations and foreign governments, in short the barbarians. Oh future generations will still think of themselves as American, aping our ways and taking our titles, but they won't be any more American than the Ostrogoths were Roman.
Crisis, disaster, my friends, looming ahead. It may already be too late.
****UPDATE:
Von Mises agrees with me at least in part
****UPDATE 2:
And the BBC by way of Breitbart's Big Government
TAGGED AS: America, Debt, Deficit, Disaster, Finance, Financial Times, Niall Ferguson, Politics, Rome
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PERMANENT LINK2537.\\ China Due for Crash
Gordon Chang knows more about what's going on in China than most other western reporters. If he's joining the growing chorus regarding China's bubble, then I'd start moving my money. In fact, I'm doing just that now on another Firefox tab.
It is Dubai times a thousand.
TAGGED AS: China, Finance, Gordon Chang
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PERMANENT LINK2524.\\ WSJ: Google Gets On the Right Side of History
Great article today in WSJ on Google's recent throwing down of the gauntlet in China.
What I find most refreshing about the piece is that it concisely lays out the ideological bankruptcy of the regime and elites that seek to profit from the oppression and murder of the Chinese people. Anyone doing business in China, anyone who bows to the wishes of the autocrats, has blood on their hands. Until Tuesday, that included Google.
Of course, China being autocratic and involved in epic levels of industrial espionage is nothing new. But finally, finally, the Google Incident has pushed this more into the limelight. More coverage here, here, here, and some less thought of implications are discussed here (will Google stand firm with censorship in France and Italy too?)
More on the staggering size and scope of Chinese espionage here, here, here, here, here, here, and this site here run by an excellent blogger who focuses on this topic.
And I've reserved the scariest spying reports for last: here, here, here, here, and finally the chiller here.
They won't have to beat our military. It'll be like the Cylon war. All of our systems will suddenly stop working and we'll be blind and dark. Be afraid.
TAGGED AS: America, China, Cyberwar, Google, Hacking, National Security, Spying
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PERMANENT LINK2522.\\ China on the March as West Continues Collapse
The bad news keeps rolling in here, here and here.
The question is, will we get our groove back and climb out of this ditch? Or is western liberal democracy destined to be permanently overcome by oriental autocracy?
****UPDATE:
Even more... read this and this and this and this
TAGGED AS: America, China, Decline and Fall, Democracy, Oligarchy
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PERMANENT LINK2520.\\ I'm Loathe to Say I'm Right...
But, well, I am. China is the antagonist for the century. We've had nonsensical policy toward them for the past 20 years. Read this and this and this and this and this and this. Among others.
TAGGED AS: America, China, War
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PERMANENT LINK2514.\\ The Once and Future British
Go read this story here at the Independent. Also be sure to read the comments. They are stunning. I wanted to comment but can't be bothered to register for their site. Luckily I have my own commenting system:
My Comment:
On this side of the Atlantic, many of us reading this article cannot fathom why Britain would surrender itself to be consumed by 'Europe' and relegate itself to the position of minor, mediocre province of an apathetic, indolent fiction called the EU. If it is the will of the people there to accept this role, then Britain is no longer British. It is instead populated by Proles who exist on State welfare from cradle to grave, take no risk, achieve nothing great and coexist in drab, monotone, groupthink sameness. They are rather like human batteries, with no independent thought or action, that power the State which succors them. If those are indeed the values, then yes the special relationship is gone for those are not our values. It is puzzling, however, because the fact is that Britain was never this way. It was afloat in a sea of euro-homogenization, but it kept the light of western civilization burning on its side of the Atlantic. That is why Britain was special and that is what made our relationship special. The split over Iraq was a mere symptom of the apathy evident in the anti-semitic and stunningly small minded comments posted here. The British were a great people who shaped the world. It is sad that they no longer seem to exist.
TAGGED AS: America, Britain, Europe, Orwellian
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PERMANENT LINK2507.\\ State Suicide
I don't have to say anything at all about this article...but I will anyway. This is exactly what will happen to the entire nation if we continue down the socialist path we seem hell bent on taking. Actually, what's happening on the Federal level is far worse than anything that happened in California. So I suspect the results will be much, much worse. Possibly catastrophic. Maybe apocalyptic.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, California, Disaster, Disgust, Economy, Finance, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2499.\\ Even China Doesn't Believe It
When the world's finest purveyors of lies, propaganda, misdirection and outright fraud don't believe the snake oil you're peddling will work, then you've got a major, major problem.
What is more frustrating and depressing is that we're not even having the discussion of whether we SHOULD be doing this kind of health care reform at all. We're simply arguing over minute details about how MUCH we should mortgage, piss away, dump in the toilet. The debate in America isn't about our decline, but how fast we want it to happen.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, China, Debt, Deficit, Health Care
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PERMANENT LINK2498.\\ The Coming Collapse of China
I've long held the belief, based on my studies at college, that China would one day collapse of its own weight. The forces at work in that part of the world for the past 3000 years aren't likely to change overnight, nor have they changed since the Communists took power 60 years ago. Even more unchanging is human nature. This collapse, brought on by loosening central power, is no different in its dynamics than any other time in China's history when similarly authoritarian control was loosened just enough for the entire thing to come unwound. Add to this loosening of CCP power an immense uptick in the materialism and driven self-interest of the various regions of China and you have the ingredients for a massive splintering of the nation into a modern version of Warring States.
A recent article by Gordon Chang in Forbes detailed how the Chinese Miracle may in fact be totally fraudulent (you should read Gordon if you are remotely interested in the future of Asia). An article in the Politico today backs that up. As does the movements of various hedge fund managers and investors including the one who correctly identified the phoniness of Enron. Now granted, figuring out a company is cooking the books is different than figuring out a secretive nation is cooking the books. But the point is that not all is as it appears to be in the Middle Kingdom.
Which brings me back to my own, long held, prediction. If China collapses or begins to, the leaders will try anything to remain in power. This includes whipping up nationalism by manufacturing a war with America over Taiwan or the South China Sea or imported chicken.
In any event, if China collapses they will stop financing our debt. This will hurt us. If China collapses and tries to take it out on America, this will hurt us. Either way we should prepare for a rough go of it where China is concerned.
Of course, our only concern as a nation at the moment is whether someone is going to give us health care for free, not the imminent collapse of the international order.
TAGGED AS: America, Asia, Capitalism, CCP, China, Communism, Economy, Finance, Forbes, Gordon Chang, Politico, Totalitarianism, War
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PERMANENT LINK2494.\\ For All Our Sakes
Let's hope the pronouncements of the Greatest Deliberative Body in the World are reflective of the general mood of the Senate.
If any final legislation resembled the House bill, it would mean the end of western liberal democracy, the end of American supremacy and the end of the greatest economic engine the world has ever seen.
I don't typically invoke God to help deal with the legislative process, but... God help us.
TAGGED AS: Democracy, Health Care, Liberty, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2493.\\ Losing Turkey
This should send shudders down the spine of anyone remotely concerned about islamic extremism and theocracies run amok.
TAGGED AS: America, Islamism, NATO, Turkey
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PERMANENT LINK2488.\\ SC man gets 3 years in prison for sex with horse
Made the front page of Drudge again!
I'm not sure which is funnier, that it took place in Horry County or that the first time he got caught he had to register as a sex offender.
Stay classy South Carolina. Stay classy.
2483.\\ Even Orwell Would Be Horrified
The march to a gaggle of unelected bureaucrats in Brussels micromanaging the daily lives of citizens in Britain took another step forward this week. Unfortunately for the people of the various European states, their freedom and liberty has been exchanged for a Pan European superstate ruled by an oligarchic elite of unelected intellectuals who use doubletalk and newspeak to put the people under the thumb of social engineering.
It is the end of France, the end of Germany, the end of Britain. The nations that took their inheritance from the great Mesopotamian civilizations, the Greeks and then the Romans, have abdicated their responsibility in carrying Western Civilization forward. They've decided that democracy and individual freedoms are not the ultimate expression of human liberty. It has become the State itself that is the Alpha and Omega.
It is truly a depressing day for any lover of history and Western Civilization.
2477.\\ Mandated Shopping
Congress cannot legislate the purchase of goods or services. It cannot force the people to buy a particular product. It cannot force the people to buy anything. This includes health insurance. In fact, the very notion of Congress forcing everyone in the nation to purchase a service is unconstitutional and therefore illegal.
"But aren't we already forced to purchase auto insurance policies?" you ask. Well of course, but that is different on two levels. First off, it is a State government, the first sovereign power under our form of government that is legislating this requirement. The Constitution specifically allocates the necessary powers to States to make and enforce such laws. Secondly, and obviously, the law only applies to people who choose to purchase a vehicle. Since owning a car is not a right (as of this writing at least - who knows, that could change any day now), there is minimal infringement upon individual liberty. It is also a key role of State government to protect our individual freedoms (including our property) from the unlawful or harmful activities of others.
If Congress is allowed to force every one of us to buy health policy, why stop there? Why not legislate that everyone must purchase an automobile from a US automaker? Or why not simply legislate directly which goods and services we are required to purchase each week and from whom we are to purchase it? Naturally to ensure 'competition' the Government itself will soon be producing goods and services and subsidizing them. And why stop there? Why not simply legislate the private sector away completely? Surely it is unfair to someone someplace that I can buy something that they cannot. We should all be forced to buy exactly the same things in the approved quantities from the approved vendors...
It is absurd, of course. Yet this is the logical extension of the argument being used to foist subpar services on us at higher prices. It is un-American, unconstitutional and represents the worst of social engineering.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Health Care, Liberty, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2474.\\ The Byzantine Doctrine
This is the read of the day. I've always thought Gibbons simplified the decline of the Romans. This simplistic view is similar to the oft repeated claims of American decline. I think this view is much more nuanced and offers a glimpse of one possible future for the Republic.
TAGGED AS: America, Byzantine, Decline and Fall, Empire, Rome, Strategy, Weekly Standard
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PERMANENT LINK2465.\\ Mr. Hume vs. Mr. Bentham
David Brooks puts on his latest subpar literary performance in the Opinion column of the New York Times. Honestly, why do they hire these guys? I know 100 better writers on the Internet they should be recruiting to prop up their laughable business plan.
At any rate, the stunningly obvious parable makes me shudder. It literally made me physically shudder when I read the best bit:
"The people on Mr. Bentham's side believe that government can get actively involved in organizing innovation....The people on Mr. Hume's side believe government should actively tilt the playing field to promote social goods and set off decentralized networks of reform, but they don't think government knows enough to intimately organize dynamic innovation."
Those are the two sides? One side thinks government should actively organize the people, society and the economy while the other merely wants the government to tilt the playing field to promote social good?
Holy shit. It sounds like both sides believe government is the ultimate expression of human evolution and by right and by nature should organize us all and promote some sort of utopian social welfare. God almighty.
Where's the side that believes the government should provide defense, deliver mail, ensure law and order, maintain a system of laws that enables fair play and DO NOTHING ELSE? Mr. Brooks makes no room in his model for any non-socialist. In his view, the entire world agrees with his progressive views and the mob that follows Fox News is illiterate, unwashed and cannot possibly conceive of the rightness and virtue of promoting social order and goodness.
It makes total sense that Mr. Brooks chose as his protagonist Jeremy Bentham. Here's a man whose first published work was an attack on the Declaration of Independence and America's freedom movement. If you believe that government exists to promote the greatest good for the greatest amount of people at the direction of the enlightened few, then Obama is your guy and Brooks is your muse. If you believe that government is created by the people in order to provide a loose structure for individual liberty, self-reliance and entrepreneurship to prosper, then... well there is no room for that in Brooks' model. The only acceptable mode in this post-modern era is the social progressive route that EVERYBODY agrees with and believes in.
The whole article makes me want to vomit. Not the least which because he sullies David Hume's name (and by proxy the entire Scottish Enlightenment, its philosophy and the guiding principles of our Founders).
David Harsanyi rebuts the entire notion with his opinion piece today at RCP. And thank God he does.
When will David Brooks realize he lives in a different, fantasy, world? I have no doubt that he and Jeremy Bentham have much more in common with each other than either has in common with the average American.
I strongly believe the average American would rather take the risk of going it on his own, work hard, suffer through and reap potential rewards for doing so than sit back idly, take no risk at all and have the 'greatest good' come his way by blessing of some remote government philosopher-bureaucrat charged with ensuring his welfare on the backs of others.
All one has to do to see the eventual effects of Brooks' favored approach is to cast your eye at some of the European countries today. Italy springs to mind. Nobody works. Everybody gets by through vast social welfare programs. The economy is crap. And nobody gives a damn.
Social engineering does not, has not, will not work outside of the university (or the newsroom).
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, David Brooks, David Hume, Elitist, Jeremy Bentham, Philosophy, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2463.\\ Bomb Iran. Now.
Fresh today with this article on quiet Pentagon preparations for massive ground penetrators, there is absurdly obvious evidence of Iran's ongoing march to the atom bomb.
TAGGED AS: Iran, Military, Nuclear Weapons, United Nations
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PERMANENT LINK2460.\\ Internet Danger
I think that the recent decision to let lapse the ICANN governing agreement is quite possibly the most dangerous thing our nation could possibly do. This is like the British giving up the Royal Navy in the 1920s. The fact is that the Internet is a product of American ingenuity and is our nation's intellectual capital. It is a strategic asset of the Republic. We've given it up to the thugs and dictators (including our future enemy China) and they will not hesitate to use it against us in every conceivable way. They will attack our industries, our infrastructure, our technologies, our universities and use the Internet, as only authoritarian states can, to undermine the existence of the Republic itself.
The world is falling apart, we're encouraging it to do so and remain more interested in Dancing With the Stars and the 2016 Olympics than the 20% effective unemployment and the dramatic fall in the relative power of our nation, our culture and our civilization.
The Visigoths are at the gate and we've just given them the key.
TAGGED AS: America, China, Decline and Fall, Disaster, ICANN, Internet, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2459.\\ China Warning
I've harped on this for years. Ever since studying China in college, I've harbored the notion that there will be war with them. Read this article and think deep about it. It isn't the rambling of an idiot or a warmonger or a neocon. This is hard evidence and solid analysis that we are indeed revisiting history. I would argue it is 1932 all over again.
My children will have to fight the Chinese because of 20 years of weakness and inept leadership when it comes to the China question.
2453.\\ My Alma-Mater, Intensely Biased
And they want me to give more money. There is a zero percent chance of my supporting my alma-mater so long as they employ ragingly biased staff who are ostensibly educating our children in how to critically think in the world. Critically think, yes, but only from a leftist viewpoint apparently.
Why is there no room for independent, balanced thought in our universities? They've turned into factories for clones, so rigid in their thinking that those that get churned out must be in shock when they enter the real world.
TAGGED AS: Bias, Boston University, Education, Leftist
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PERMANENT LINK2450.\\ Holding Out the Hand of Friendship
"...to everyone except your friends" should be the tagline. Daniel Henninger has a great analysis on Obama's peculiar outreach to thugs and dictators and his total neglect of legitimate friends, infant democracies looking for help and struggling democracy movements in critical parts of the world.
The critical bit:
"In trying to plumb why the U.S. won't promote or protect its own best idea, one starts with Mr. Obama's remarks at the "reset" visit in Moscow: "America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor would we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country."
Setting aside that no one is talking about the U.S. literally "imposing" a government in this day and age, what is one to make of a left-of-center American political leader taking such a diffident stance toward democratic movements? The people who live under the sway of the top dog in all the nations that have earned high-level Obama envoys are the world's poor, and one would expect the social-justice left to support them. That may no longer be true on the American or European left."
Good question. Why aren't we out there promoting the best thing about this nation? It is our greatest, original idea and we've thrown it in the dustbin. The world's poor and oppressed, the natural constituency of the liberal left, are thrown to the wolves and left to twist in the wind.
At least George Bush followed rhetoric with action by carpet bombing the African continent with billions in practical assistance to prevent the spread of AIDS and malaria and fund drug cocktails for those who already were living with HIV. Actions. Not just words.
When will America stand up for those that seek to attain our freedoms? When will we follow words of hope and change with action? We gin up these movements with rhetoric and grandiose speeches and then when the people actually rise against their overlords, we sit back and watch as they're mercilessly crushed.
At some point, the stock in Democracy and Freedom will fall so low that no one will bother listening to the words anymore.
TAGGED AS: Africa, Barack Obama, Democracy, Dictatorship, Freedom, Liberty, Rhetoric
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PERMANENT LINK2440.\\ Vivre Sarkozy!
Sarkozy takes it to Barry. When the President of France is tougher than you are, you might be a bit of a wuss.
Seriously though. In the dark days of the early 2000's, the French were weak and sniveling annoyances. Now they're leading the freaking charge while we read teleprompters and dream of futures where Americans are controlled from the District of Columbia to live and breathe and think in a manner consistent with the ideology of the ivory tower theorists.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, France, Iran, Nicolas Sarkozy, United Nations, US
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PERMANENT LINK2439.\\ He Ain't No Martin Sheen
Sad but true. Sad in that 48% of the electorate saw clearly what the other 52% didn't. I wonder what the world would be like without the liberal myopia of youth?
Best bit:
"This is the fine mess Barack Obama told us would never happen if Americans would elect him to soothe the fears of the frightened and bank the ambitions of evildoers of the world. Suddenly, the president has to deal with headaches, a thousand town halls, with hundreds of thousands of angry bigots, racists and Nazis of hysterical liberal imagination jeering his scheme to take over the health care of the nation, never prepared him for. He's got headaches no speechwriter can cure. "
He's got headaches no speechwriter can cure. I love that line.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, China, Europe, Iran, Russia, US, Washington Times, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2437.\\ America is Post-WW1 Britain
Shiver. "Australia is already linking its fortunes to China through commodity ties."
TAGGED AS: China, Dollar, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2436.\\ Speak Softly and Tip Toe Around Your Enemies
What bothers me the most about this article is that it makes plain our weakness and a deliberate choice to remain weak. The proposal to shrink the Navy's carrier force in the face of current and emerging competitors who may resort to asymmetrical warfare may make sense in light of budget constraints. However, our current force projection doctrine centered as it is around carrier strike groups, must be REPLACED with something else. You don't simply pick up the ball and say, well I guess I can't compete anymore so I'm going home. The doctrine could change to smaller, stealthier, carriers, better defended carriers, space-based carriers, rock-solid missile defense systems, or a move away from carrier doctrine entirely.
Canceling the F22, canceling the Army's future combat systems program, canceling the space program, canceling missile defense; these make us look weak and vulnerable. The surest way to invite a rising competitor to do battle is give them every indication that you're old and tired and weak. This was a central theme in Germany's bid to compete with Britain in the late 1800's and early 1900s. That ended in disaster for both.
TAGGED AS: Aircraft Carriers, China, F22, Military, Missile Defense, Weakness
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PERMANENT LINK2435.\\ Why the World Loves Barry
The British have a bead on the man.
I just don't quite understand why he's so virulently anti-Israeli.
Best bit:
"The president scores highly at the UN for refusing to project American values and military might on the world stage, with rare exceptions like the war against the Taliban. His appeasement of Iran, his bullying of Israel, his surrender to Moscow, his call for a nuclear free world, his siding with Marxists in Honduras, his talk of a climate change deal, have all won him plaudits in the large number of UN member states where US foreign policy has traditionally been viewed with contempt. "
TAGGED AS: America, Appeasement, Barack Obama, Daily Telegraph, United Nations, War on Terror
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PERMANENT LINK2434.\\ Big Brother Chu to the Rescue
Aside from the sheer self-righteous assertion that everybody except for a few lunatics in the sticks agree totally with climato-nazis, does it bother no one but me that this story is a page directly out of Orwell's novel?
I mean, the government has to teach us because we clearly don't know what is good for us?
I don't trust government, I don't admire government, I don't need government to run my life for me. I don't need regulations on everything including the appropriate way to piss in the morning. Pave the roads, field the army and keep the Islamic fanatics away from my children. Anything else you do is something I don't need and frankly don't very much care for.
TAGGED AS: Environazis, EPA, Government, Liberty, Steven Chu
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PERMANENT LINK2433.\\ Disarming the Responsible
In a Wall Street Journal Opinion piece, Bret Stephens lays out why America is doomed. Not just America but all western peace loving nations.
I would differ in my long term predictions, however. Appeasement and weakness in the West historically invites war and turmoil. And so it will again. A nation or group of nations will attempt to exploit our perceived or actual weakness. The war will be long and brutal and ultimately we will prevail. We'll undergo decades of self-flagellation for ever having been so gullible and naive. I'm a historian. Mark my words that it will happen.
The best bit:
"In 1943, Walter Lippmann observed that the disarmament movement had been 'tragically successful in disarming the nations that believed in disarmament.' That ought to have been the final word on the subject."
TAGGED AS: America, Appeasement, Barack Obama, Economy, Wall Street Journal
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PERMANENT LINK2426.\\ Chinese Chicken
The real financial crisis we're facing is the only one no one is talking about.
TAGGED AS: China, Economy, US
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PERMANENT LINK2425.\\ The Brits: "Obama is out of his depth"
I could have told them that a year ago. Aside from minor quibbles (missile defense is not an 'untried scheme' as it has been tested for 10 years and has a 80% kill ratio), the rest of the article makes a very good case.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, The Telegraph, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2417.\\ China on the March
The news is full of stories today on how the Chinese are eating our lunch while we sit around and fiddle with out entitlement programs.
Don't expect the current bunch of neophytes and weaklings to do a damn thing about it so long as they believe health care, wealth redistribution and government guarantees are all inherent human rights.
This is alarming and has been warned of for at least 15 years.
2416.\\ Obama the Weak
In a bold act of appeasement and surrender to our enemies, Obama has scrapped the missile defense shield.
Quite apart from being reckless and feckless and exposing us to nuclear threats, it also hangs our allies out to dry. Poland the Czechs will put this backstab on par with the last time they were bent over and fucked in the ass by the West, 1938 and 39.
We've just lost Eastern Europe to the orbit of the Russian Empire. Nicely done Barry. Anything else you'd liked to surrender? Let's do it now and get it over with.
Lot's of news on this here, here, here and here.
What is most distressing is the apparent assumption by the boobs in DC that by sacrificing the security of the American and European peoples, they'll get Russia to cooperate on a range of issues (Iran). A first year undergrad in European History knows better than this and is clearly more fit to run our foreign policy.
TAGGED AS: Appeasement, Barack Obama, Missile Defense, NATO, Poland, Russia
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PERMANENT LINK2414.\\ Seems Like It's Going Well...
If you needed further proof that the current class of clowns has no idea what it is doing, read this story.
Obama's economic philosophy, borne of ivory tower theories and with a heavy dose of idealistic communal flower power, will end up God-Damning America just as his supporters desire.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, The Telegraph
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PERMANENT LINK2409.\\ Poor Canada
And indirectly, poor America. Since our national educational, economic and technological cultures are so closely linked, this spells major trouble.
Even without overt militarism, a nation can defend itself in at least SOME aspect. Not in Canada where they're basically giving it all away for free.
TAGGED AS: Canada, China, Espionage, US
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PERMANENT LINK2408.\\ Another Reason I Love Michael Barone
...he agrees with me (albeit a week later).
Best bit:
"In a democracy, citizens don't always take the advice of their betters, even that of Friedman and the three experts he quotes -- a climateprogress.org blogger, a former Clinton budget official and a 'global trade consultant who teaches at Baruch College.'
TAGGED AS: China, Michael Barone, New York Times, Thomas Friedman
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PERMANENT LINK2407.\\ Where Are You James Monroe?
He never would have let this happen.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Economy, Hugo Chavez, Monroe Doctrine, Russia, Venezuala
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PERMANENT LINK2401.\\
In a piece penned from Bizarro America, Thomas 'the world is flat' Friedman waxes poetic over the totalitarian state of China and wishes could please have some more wasteful spending in Congress if it means that we can finally impose all that is good and enlightened on the dumb rubes here in America.
Fuck freedom and liberty if it means the electorate (mob) can overrule those intellectuals who are fit to govern them. The unwashed masses shouldn't have a say in their own lives if it means that lifestyle conflicts with the philosophy of the ivory tower.
An American Liberal Democrat advocating totalitarian dictatorship of the enlightened elite. I never thought I'd ever live to see the day.
TAGGED AS: China, Dictatorship, Economy, Leninism, Politics, Thomas Friedman
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PERMANENT LINK2397.\\ The Public Option
Seems to be going well in the UK as well as in France.
Yeah. I can't imagine why we don't want our system to emulate theirs.
Let me reiterate. Anything run by the Federal Government is wasteful, inefficient and costly. Oh and typically results in a piss poor product.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Sorry, I'm missing the part that says "Congress shall have the power to create, administer, fund and control Health Care" and I'm also missing the part of the Bill of Rights that lists health care as one of the enumerated rights...
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, France, Health Care, Socialism, UK
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PERMANENT LINK2393.\\ LA Times and Editorializing the Absurd
If you can get through today's editorial in the LA Times without laughing then you've bested me. The naivete of the entire position is stunning and even more so from an alleged news organization.
The notion that any regime in Iran just wants to sit down and talk with us is absurd. The Iranian interest is not in making things smoother with the United States. If they do that and thaw the relations, the regime will topple under a groundswell of public pressure. The only way they cling to power is to paint the 'other' as an evil, interfering hegemon bent on the destruction of the Iranian people, culture and Islamic religion. If relations were to thaw, the nuclear program would come under international scrutiny which is not in the mullahs' interest.
Heeding Iran's call for talks at this juncture is no different than acquiescing to HItler's request for conference in 1938 in Munich. That went so well that surely we should give it another go. After all, talking to thugs and dictators has always worked out.
TAGGED AS: Iran, LA Times, Nonsense, Nuclear Weapons
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PERMANENT LINK2392.\\ Van Jones is a Lunatic
Just watch the video...
This guy is our leader's pick for high office? Questioning his judgment at this point. What's next, Reverend Wright for Racial Reconciliation Czar?
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Democrats, Racist
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PERMANENT LINK2388.\\ How Did Krugman Get It So Wrong?
In a must read article of the day, Paul Krugman, self-anointed Economic Grand Pubah of the Republic, exhaustively analyzes the current fiscal crisis and what happened at a macro level of economic theory and philosophy to get us here.
It is a great article that lays out the opposing camps of economic theorists and their general belief systems. He then proceeds to draw the total opposite conclusion from his data than I did. Now granted, I'm not a 2008 Nobel Prize winner in Economic Science, but it seems to me that a simple return to pure Keynesian theory would simply lead us down the path of rehashing the past 60 years of US economic development. My argument is that the 21st Century is a different time and place with totally different challenges than the 20th Century. Keynesian economics failed during the latter half of the 20th, so why on Earth should it work at all in the 21st? It would make sense in a manufacturing economy based on exports with Unions and farmers and goods being exchanged. It seems hopelessly antiquated when dealing with a service based economy where knowledge is bought and sold.
But hey, what do I know. Read the article anyway, cause it is very very interesting.
TAGGED AS: Economy, Keynes, Paul Krugman, Politics, Taxes
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PERMANENT LINK2386.\\ Sentenced to death on the NHS - Telegraph
Yeah. I wonder how this is working out for the Brits? Clearly we need the same thing here. You know, to ensure 'competition' (as if State control somehow miraculously provides MORE competition than the free market containing hundreds of competing companies).
TAGGED AS: Daily Telegraph, Health Care, NHS, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2385.\\ Holder Versus American Patriots
Ralph Peters does his usual job of verbally stripping his opponents of any philosophical legitimacy.
I like that he's framed the attack on American security not as a policy decision but as an ideological purge of the third world type. It is an interesting, but very subtle twist on this argument that resonates with me because I firmly believe that he's absolutely correct.
Dangerous times, my friends. Stay thirsty.
**** UPDATE:
Reading some of the comments. Didn't realize Eric Holder worked for Janet Reno and was involved in Ruby Ridge and Waco. Makes total sense that he'd seek to undermine our Liberty.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, CIA, Eric Holder, George Bush, New York Post, Ralph Peters, Terrorists
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PERMANENT LINK2384.\\ Bending Over (Backwards)
Go ahead and read this, now. Completely agree with the article. In fact, I suggest we launch an investigation into World War II abuses committed by American GIs against Nazis. Might make sense in the bizarro world we live in today.
Point to remember for the rest of the day:
"So many 'rights' have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you."
Amen brother.
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Britain, CIA, National Security, Scotland, Terrorists
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PERMANENT LINK2381.\\ Canada Whores Itself Out to China
Forbes is reporting on a deal that gives PetroChina a majority controlling interest in one of Canada's largest oil companies that happens to be sitting on 5 billion barrels of oil in the tar sands of Alberta.
Aside from the fact that China now has national security interests in North America and will defend those interests with typical Chinese nationalistic fury, the Chinese environmental record promises to transform western Canada into a massive cesspool.
Way to go Canada! You've sold the goods for a pittance and in return doomed your ecology and chained your foreign policy to the whims of the world's largest, cruelest dictatorship bent on global domination.
I cannot, for the life of me, figure out who in Ottawa thought this was in Canadian national interest. Look for increasing, creeping, Chinese involvement not only in the Canadian economy but in local and national politics to secure and insure their investment in raping Alberta. Canadian politicians will increasingly seek to placate and suck up to their bosses in Beijing and further distance themselves from the United States.
When the showdown inevitably comes, which side will Canada choose?
TAGGED AS: Canada, China, Economy, Foreign Policy, Oil
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PERMANENT LINK2379.\\ And in Another Victory For Socialism...
Apparently we're going to declare that the due process of the Honduran Supreme Court is null and void. America is demanding a return of the socialist thug to power or else we'll suspend aid. That's right. We're suspending aid to a fellow democracy where the people rose up and threw out their leader. The military enacted it, the courts deemed it legal, but we don't care.
TAGGED AS: Honduras, Leftist, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2373.\\ Calling Jack Bauer
Marc Thiessen's piece in the Journal is right on in my opinion. There's got to be a more balanced dialogue about this topic. And the dialogue should be entirely out of the public (hence bitterly political) domain. Jack Bauer wouldn't have to put up with this shit.
TAGGED AS: CIA, Marc Thiessen, Torture, Wall Street Journal
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PERMANENT LINK2372.\\ Madeline,You Ignorant Slut
If nothing demonstrates the Left's approach to terrorism more than this video, then I don't know what will.
Here on that bastion of objectivity, MSNBC, Ms. Albright refers to the worst case of terrorism in British history as an 'accident'. Let's hope and pray that she meant to say 'incident'. No surprise that the apologist Andrea Mitchell didn't bother asking for clarification, she probably agrees with it being an accident.
WTF
TAGGED AS: Leftist, Libya, Lockerbie, Madeline Albright, MSNBC, WTF
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PERMANENT LINK2370.\\ Watch Out Mr. Terrorist!
As if ignoring the release of a convicted Libyan mass murderer wasn't enough, now this absurdity.
That's right, we might, just might, do something to you that the State of California has identified to be potentially dangerous to pregnant mothers and contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer in monkeys.
Now, tell us who masterminded the Cole bombing or you might get cancer in a few years!
TAGGED AS: CIA, Obama, Terrorists
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PERMANENT LINK2369.\\ Scary As Hell
and even more lethal to your identity if you let this thing on your system. I'm more intrigued by the notion (most plausible I think) that this is the work of some agency someplace. I'd be looking directly at the ex-Soviet republics as well as China. Someone's trying to undermine Western Civilization (aside from the Democratic Party of course).
TAGGED AS: China, Computers, Conficker, New York Times, Viruses
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PERMANENT LINK2365.\\ Rule Britannia...
I've never thought that our healthcare system is perfect here, or even particularly stellar. But by God anything produced by the private sector in terms of healthcare has got to be better than letting Joe Bureaucrat run things. The people that bring you the IRS want to dictate your medical treatment? No thanks.
Pundits frequently make hash of the fact that socialized medicine in countries with national health systems is crap. I'd hasten to point out that we have a national health system in the United States and it is called Medicare/Medicaid. I know people who use Medicare. My entire family works in the health sector. Nobody who uses Medicare would prefer Medicare over a comprehensive plan like many of us enjoy. In fact, I can't think of many services that the Federal Government manages and offers to its citizens that is superior to an equivalent private sector offering. Not even NASA seems to work that well anymore when compared to private companies like Bigelow, SpaceX or Rotary. Hell even the CIA has to bring in Blackwater in order to get some quality work done.
If you were ever a believer in the ability of the Federal Government to manage itself wisely, a few Google searches on the deficit and pork-stuffed appropriations bills ought to cure you of that. But in the event that you believe a Federal Government, which cannot even manage EXISTING national health programs well and provide quality care, ought to be granted executive authority over your well being, then allow me to disabuse you of that notion by providing this excellent overview of the effectiveness of the NHS in the motherland. Where I come from we call it crimes against humanity and while not on the order of Hitler's 20 million, Stalin's 60 million or Mao's 70 million, providing "cruel" healthcare for 1/60th of your citizens in an enlightened Liberal Democracy is criminal in my book. I wonder if the International Criminal Court should bring charges? Nah they're probably too busy trying to prosecute US government officials for doing their jobs.
TAGGED AS: Big Government, Bureaucracy, Crimes Against Humanity, Government, Health Care, Telegraph, UK, US
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PERMANENT LINK2361.\\ On Death Panels
For any that missed my meme on Facebook that apparently led to a number of 'friends' deleting me.
"The chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out there. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. That is why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance." - Barack Obama, April 14, 2009.
No thanks. I don't want a bureau giving me guidance on making decisions about death and dying. I don't care if they are super educated doctors and government advisers acting in the best interest of the rest of society. No. The only "independent group" I need in order to make those kinds of decisions are in my family.
Political channels, panels and "the country" have no right to make medical decisions on my behalf. Nor should they advise, propose, guide or even have any knowledge whatsoever of my medical conditions, treatments, complaints or visits. They do not need to know what meds I'm taking or what my diet consists of or how much I weigh or if my ass itches. My information does not need to go into a gigantic database with cool analytics that allows a group of politicos to decide that I'm in the 80% Obama mentioned above and categorize me or anyone I care about as an end-of-lifer.
He can take his independent groups, his death panels, and go to hell. This is the material from which revolutions spring.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Death Panels, Health Care, Liberals
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PERMANENT LINK2355.\\ Calling Leni Riefenstahl
Are you freaking kidding me? I feel like the lone Wiemar Democrat in January 1933 screaming "WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING!?!" Where is the media criticism? Where are the intellectuals on this blatant group-think mindlessness?
TAGGED AS: Barack Obama, Children, Communism, Creepy, Liberals, Politics, Self-Righteousness, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2353.\\ To My Congressman
Since your online comment submission application is generating error 500's and has an obvious database failure (perhaps it is full of angry comments?), I'm sending my comments to you via my blog.
Dear Mr. Inglis,
I am so enraged by your first vote on the bailout, Congressman, that you've managed to flip me from a supporter to someone who will actively speak out AGAINST you in the next election to prevent you from screwing me and my fellow constituents even further.
You've voted to destroy this country and every one of its founding principles. You've put your political self-interest ahead of the need of the people. You've managed to allow liberalism, dare I say socialism, to substitute its odious philosophy for market capitalism.
You should be ashamed.
You should be alarmed at the pork that this new bill is full of. You should be scrambling to prevent the outright embarrassment you will incur if you vote for this earmarked boondoggle that we cannot afford. It will saddle my children with debt to the Chinese for the rest of their lives and I won't ever let you or my fellow constituents forget it.
And tell the House to get new IT staff to fix that piece of shit website you have.
TAGGED AS: Bob Inglis, Congress, Economy, GOP, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2350.\\ John McCain, Hypocrite
I'm seething with rage this morning. The guy I was hoping would come to town and throw out the spenders and ax the special interests has gone down without a fight, and he's not even in office yet!
How can a man spend his entire career fighting lobbyists, special interest groups and pork barrel spending and vote for this bailout bill? How can he rail against earmarks and express such passion about cutting wasteful spending only to go ahead and accept this Christmas tree festooned with waste, earmarks and special interest goodies to the tune of over a trillion dollars?
How can he accept this? How? I was thrilled last week when he suspended his campaign. I thought here is the man of action I'd like to see running the show. He flew to Washington and instead of standing up for what was right, he stood up and was counted for what was easiest. After he flew into town and got the read on the situation, he should have come out in front of the public and denounced this horrific attempt to manipulate the markets and extend bureaucratic control over capitalism as the pile of socialist shit it is. Furthermore, he should have said, there is nothing that could make me vote for this bill in its current form. No goodies, no trinkets, no added features, no extra earmarks, no nothing that would make me, John McCain, vote for something that is so at odds with my political philosophy, my record and my core beliefs.
What would Mr. Reagan think of you now John? You've become a big government stooge supporting a bill that gives away the future of my children and entrusts it to Chinese financiers and Islamic oil producers.
In the end, you've surrendered your principles when the time came to stand up for them. You've sold us down the river John. And what saddens me the most about it is that, while 73 of your colleagues (and it looks now like a majority of the House) also sold us down the river, you were the one guy that I thought could turn us around. So this black mark counts doubly, triply against you. You've ceded the moral high ground and condemned this country to 8 years of liberalism run amok. You've hastened the end of the American era by allowing the Democrats to ride their way to power in all branches of government. Their insidious policies will bring about the final death knell of this once great country.
This is on you, John. You and every other alleged fiscal conservative in the GOP. You and your buddy Lindsay have brought on catastrophe.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Conservative, Constitution, Economy, GOP, John McCain, Liberals, Lindsay Graham, Politics
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PERMANENT LINK2349.\\ Karl Marx: 1, Adam Smith: 0
The Senate has passed Bailout v2.0 (aka Crap Sandwich 2.0) by a vote of 74 to 25.
Are there really only 25 market believers in the US Senate? God help us all if this is true. I'd almost rather believe that the 74 voted Yay in order to devour the billions worth of pork crapola that they've stuffed in this donkey.
I'm sorry to say that my own state apparently has only 1 Senator who places his faith in Adam Smith and not in the greedy, grubby, grabby hand of the United States Government. Well, you say, it must be Mr. McCain's good friend and fellow pork buster Lindsay Graham. Well, says I, you'd be dead wrong. Senator Graham has voted in favor of this steaming pile of shit. It was the junior Senator of the great State of South Carolina, Jim DeMint, who courageously stood up and threw down the bullshit card. I know Jim DeMint. I don't think the man voted against this because his office was inundated with outraged constituents. I honestly think he voted his principles. What a strange, absent concept in today's Congress!
So as this vote represents a victory for Marx, so too it reveals those in our nation's government who firmly believe in the foundational principles of this country as laid down by the founders and will stand up to prove it. Crises have a funny way of bringing forth those principled few and sending the unscrupulous masses scurrying for cover. It's like turning a light on in a grimy kitchen and watching the bugs run.
Weasled out. Beware, Mr. McCain
Stood up and was counted
Nod to Michele for the craptastic references.
TAGGED AS: Congress, Constitution, Economy, Jim DeMint, Lindsay Graham, Politics, Senate
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PERMANENT LINK2348.\\ W.W.A.H.D. ?
The notion that bureaucrats should be involved in manipulating the free market is noxious. That being said, the prospect of economic panic, credit drying up, a domino effect of failing institutions and the rest of the world gloating at our problems compels me to support an effort to extend financial protection at taxpayer expense.
We've done this type of thing before, of course: the Savings & Loan collapse of the late 80s, the collapse of Chrysler in the late 70s, the Home Owner's Loan Corp of the 30s and 40s, the JP Morgan rescue of the 1907, the panics in the 1870s, 1841, 1819 and 1809. Of course, the granddaddy of all rescues was the original one in 1792 engineered by arguably my favorite founder, Mr. Hamilton. You can go read about it if you like.
But would Mr. Hamilton be happy by the current approach? Having studied the man in some detail, I suspect not. Hamilton supported public debt and strong central government in the furtherance of American economic power. He wanted to supplement and complement the principles of Adam Smith, not restrain them or legislate them. He would not have recognized the concept of restrained, third-way market capitalism that seems to be creeping around the globe.
The notion that the Federal government should be involved in the economy was a given to him, as it is to us today. But that involvement was not to function as an economic entity somehow superior to the invisible hand, regulating, restricting, governing it. The role of the Federal government, he would say, is to enable the American worker to start a business, sell his wares, sell his services, produce his product. To the extent that a bailout enables positive economic activities and doesn't restrict the economy through microscopic regulatory control, then it is a good thing. If the Fed presumes to know better how to govern the economy than Capitalism itself, then a bailout is a bad thing.
So where do we sit? To be honest, I don't know. Injecting liquidity into the system in order to prop up otherwise failing institutions seems to be a bad use of taxpayer money. It substitutes the judgment of bureaucrats and legislators (campaigning for re-election) for the judgment of the market. That should scare anyone who has ever seen government judgment in action (i.e. the DMV, FEMA, the IRS). Should we trust the people with a 10% approval rating to legislate a $14 trillion economy? I suspect not. Alexander Hamilton, I can assure you, would be aghast.
At the end of the day, what would Hamilton do? I believe he would look at companies that are failing because of the risk they incurred and suggest that they be allowed to fail and not nationalized or otherwise artificially propped up. He would view Government Sponsored Entities such as Fannie and Freddie with disdain and recoil at the notion that trillions of dollars worth of housing was being exposed to high risk because everyone was overconfident in the unlimited support and blank check guarantee from the Federal Government (aka the American Taxpayer). The government should not be loaning money to credit risks and acting as a mortgage lender and backer, he would say. The government should act as an enabler to allow people to own houses they can afford and not guarantee mortgages to those who cannot.
The very concept of risk-reward, the foundation of capitalism, is threatened with the bill currently being tossed about on Capitol Hill. Restricting market capitalism at this juncture would not be something Mr. Hamilton would favor. It didn't work in 1932 and it won't work now. The solution is to unleash the market forces, not further legislate them.
TAGGED AS: Alexander Hamilton, Capitalism, Congress, Economy, Politics, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2347.\\ Another Year, Another Kid, Another Anniversary
Yes, #3 is due in little over a month. Exciting to have another child; my first daughter. Born in the year of the first female Vice President? Who knows. What I do know is that I have the urge again to write on a regular basis. My children and the urge to write both seem to come at the same time of the year, the months around the 11th of September.
1777 wasn't a good year for America. Washington was in full-blown retreat, lurching his way across New Jersey and Pennsylvania desperately trying to find food for his army. Things were so bad that the soldiers, mostly naked (literally naked), were roasting their dead comrades' boots and eating the leather soles. Inflation at that time makes today's Zimbabwe look like a model of economic success. Yet the country pulled through. Things weren't terribly good, but perseverance and an indomitable spirit got those hardy people through some very dark times.
1861 was another year that wasn't great for America. My own state of South Carolina had rebelled, declared independence, bombarded Fort Sumter and the rest of the south followed it into war. Let me, for a moment, attest to the character of the southerners (of which I will likely never truly be a part). They are a tough bunch full of stubbornness, determination and grit. If anyone could defeat Lincoln's North, it was the people who gave birth to Lee, Bragg, Polk, Johnston, Hood, Beauregard and Forrest. But by cleaving a great people in two over an issue that should have (and could have) been resolved in 1783, the conflict that would ensue was an ordeal that America recovered from only after a century, appropriate legislation and anyone alive at the time had passed. It was the bravery and determination of people like Andrew Johnson, Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson that put to rest the schism and finally healed the nation.
1941 was a year that came to be infamous. It was not a good year for America. The Japanese had destroyed US Naval power in the Pacific and the British alone held the line against a terrible darkness. Western Civilization itself, and all of its 2500 year history, was at risk of slipping into a deep abyss. Let there be no mistake about how bleak things looked in 1941. There was a resignation in these States to Germany ruling Europe. There was a real, powerful (magnitudes more powerful than today) anti-war lobby that sought to keep America isolated and insulated from the world. The Japanese changed that on December 7th at 7:48 am. The result was a rallied America that had never been as unified and an awakened giant the likes of which the world had never before seen in the history of mankind. In a improbable turnabout, just 4 years later the United States was more engaged and involved in the world and more relatively powerful than any nation in history.
2001 was not a good year for America. Politics had torn the people asunder the previous year. Charges of a poisonous and ridiculous nature were hurled about between countrymen. There was nothing short of internal war. Had the politicians and ideologies been represented by individual States as they had been in the 19th Century, civil war might have resulted. The economy had had a bubble burst in the first months of 2000 and had yet to bottom out. Jobs were being lost left and right and GDP was threatening to enter negative territory for the first time in a generation. And yet things only got worse. In a short, brutish and nasty flash, an act of terrorism took more American lives in a single day than at any point in the nation's history save for the 1900 Galveston Hurricane and the Battle of Antietam. It was a stunning attack on the world's only indispensable nation, the only MegaPower, a nation that had never been attacked on its own soil in such a brutal and cowardly manner. Yet the nation and its people circled the wagons and pulled together. The people's leader, a man who came to power promising to keep America out of foreign adventures, summoned an improbable inner strength and vowed to focus on nothing but her defense. And to that end, he succeeded for the duration of his tenure.
I know I'll never forget that day. I doubt anyone alive in this country at that time will forget. It is etched in our collective memory in a way that few events are. It is a sad anniversary when it comes around. It reminds me of our mortality and the vulnerability of our people and our nation. I can only hope that my soon-to-be three children will never have to face a day like that. My oldest was 5 at the time and I doubt he recalls it. I envy him. If there was ever a harbinger of the new world order, it was al Qaeda. George Bush the Father spoke in 1991 of a new world order with a thousand points of light coming into being following the defeat of communism. It was not to be, sadly. The real indication that we lived in a new era was when cowards murdered 3000 Americans on a clear, crisp fall day in September 2001.
It makes me tear up to this very moment.
However, I have every faith in the spirit of my adopted country that we will pull through. And as we pull through, we bring with us the beacon of light that represents the sum history of the Greeks, Romans, Franks and Britons. If Western Civilization is doomed to fall prey to the darkness of radical ideologies (be it tyranny, racism, sexism, totalitarianism or religious extremism), it won't be on America's watch.
Tomorrow morning at 9am, I will board a plane with my eldest son and travel to New York. Ostensibly the trip is about experiencing Yankee Stadium before it is torn down. But it is also, and more importantly, about experiencing Ground Zero and the 9/11 Tributes at the Yankees game that I hope will leave an indelible mark on him. The greatest gift I feel I can give my children is knowledge and experience of the history I have witnessed.
And so I celebrate another year of writing and another child while I also remember the events of 7 years ago today.
Never Forget.
2346.\\ Outrageous!
From the AP:
"The Senate plan would rush rebates - $600 for individuals, $1,200 for couples - to most taxpayers and cut business taxes in hopes of reviving the economy. Individuals making up to $75,000 a year and couples earning up to $150,000 would get rebates."
The fucking audacity of Senate Democrats to decide that I don't need a rebate! It is unacceptable and infuriating. The sheer arrogance of the players and the inherent unfairness of the stimulus package reveals it to be the politically opportunistic scam that it is.
Who the hell are they to arbitrarily decide that I make enough money that I don't need any relief? I pay taxes just like everyone else. Oh wait, no I don't. I pay more taxes than most people. The Federal government appropriates 35% of my income and gives it away to other people who faceless bureaucrats feel 'deserve' it more than I do. I work hard for my money. To see this kind of marxist wealth redistribution on a normal day really burns my ass. To compound this with the knowledge that people who contribute nothing to the gross domestic product (or indeed to American society) are going to get rebate checks when my family will not simply ENRAGES me.
Who the fuck do they think they are? They have no sovereignty over my liberty. They have dubious Constitutional authority to forcibly take away my family's livelihood and GIVE IT AWAY to other people. I can only imagine Locke, Henry, and a pantheon of founders are turning in their graves as this Republic lurches to euro-style state socialism.
TAGGED AS: Constitution, Democrats, Liberty, Senate, Socialism, Taxes, The Founders
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PERMANENT LINK2345.\\ God Save the Republic
She makes me want to VOMIT with every fraudulent moment of her existence.
"Watch your future's end..."
TAGGED AS: Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Phony, Politics, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2343.\\ Social Engineering Redux
I heard this on BBC World this morning and nearly shat myself: Put carbon tax on babies: academic says.
Does this smack of failed social engineering projects of the last century or what? It is very thinly veiled attempt to force human civilization into a box of robotic obedience to crackpot theories. It is a truly dystopian future that looms ahead if we are going to seriously put ecological well being ahead of human existence.
It is the latest in a string of theoretical nonsense that seeks to manage the relationship between population and consumption of resources. It is also frequently the realm of science fiction.
"The seeds of the Little War were planted in a restless summer during the mid-1960s, with sit-ins and student demonstrations as youth tested its strength. By the early 1970s over 75 percent of the people living on Earth were under 21 years of age. The population continued to climb -- and with it the youth percentage.
In the 1980s the figure was 79.7 percent.
In the 1990s, 82.4 percent.
In the year 2000 -- critical mass."
It is Last Day!
Technorati: ChrisCam, webcam, Weblog, Blog, greens, children, crackpot theories, social experiment, dystopian future, Logan's Run
TAGGED AS: 1984, BBC, Children, Environazis, Logan's Run, Socialism
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PERMANENT LINK2340.\\ German Insight
West Wing: The Comeback of a War President - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
Never thought about things quite like it is spelled out in this article. I mean, nothing in it is a surprise. But the analysis is something I haven't seen before. I have some quibbles, but overall I think he's got it right. It sorta seems obvious if you stand back and look at it. A generational war. Not a season of 24.
Technorati: ChrisCam, webcam, Weblog, Blog, politics, George Bush
TAGGED AS: Der Spiegel, George Bush, Politics, The Media, War on Terror
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