From the tone of the federal rhetoric on the Fairness Doctrine, the opinion in our government seems to be that the right to free speech means someone is obligated to give you a radio station. Over the years there has been a consistent refrain that private ownership “… of the airways…” is antithetical to free speech.
As usual with federal, statist ideas, this one is utter idiocy. (I wish we could figure out how to apply it to the right to keep and bear arms: “Springfield Armory, I have a right to that own a gun, so you are morally required to give me a new XD45.”)
First of all, we aren’t talking about control of “the airways.” The airways are just that – air. We are talking about controlling a transmitted signal, not the air through which it passes.
When the statists talk about controlling what is transmitted, they are talking about seizing control of the transmitters and the intellectual property that comprises the message being transmitted. They are saying that it is unfair to allow one person – the owner of the equipment – to do with his property as he pleases. They say we must make a law that forces the owner of the station to give other individuals unrestricted and uncompensated use of his property. This is fundamentally a property rights issue, which means it is fundamentally an issue of a human being’s right to live as a human being.
No one finds radio stations lying around. Someone has to build them, equip them, write the material to be broadcast, and operate them. Without the freedom to act in his own perceived best interests, no one would ever get into the radio business. When you turn your radio on, you are experiencing the end result of what could be years of hard work, education, investment, negotiation, invention, hard work, risk, commitment, and hard work. The music or the voices that you hear belong to other human beings – it is their property – their creation – and they are letting you use it. You also get to listen to the messages of their advertisers, who actually pay the bills in hope you will buy their products.
That radio signal is just as much private property as your car or your house. Does the freedom to live where we want mean that anyone else has a right to move in to your house? Of course not. It means that anyone can go anywhere and attempt to get his own house.
When a man makes something, be it a shoe or a radio signal, he puts his time and creativity into it. We all have only so much time; it’s called life. So the thing he made is what he traded that portion of his life for; it stands for that part of his life, just as a check isn’t real money, but stands for money that’s in a bank. (Ideally speaking.) To take that thing from him without compensation is to deprive him of that part of his life, which, in some places, is called murder or, at best, slavery. To say that another person has a superior right to that thing is obscene. Upon what is such a claim based?
It is based on a negative factor – inability or inadequacy. If Lucy Looter were capable and adequate, she’d have her own radio station. The only reason she needs control of one she didn’t build is because she is not capable of building one. This theme permeates all statist philosophy: the rights of the poor, the inadequate, the unable are superior to those of the wealthy, adequate, and able. And there is no attempt at justifying it morally! They claim this is so precisely because of the inability of the former. In their view, weakness is morality.
The right to own property does not mean someone is required to give you his property. The right to keep and bear arms does not mean someone is required to give you a gun. The right to freedom of speech does not mean that someone is required to give you a radio station. The right to assemble peaceably does not mean that someone is required to give you an auditorium. The right to an education does not mean that someone should be forced, against his will, to educate you at no cost to yourself. The right to health care does not mean you have the right to enslave the doctor and force him to care for you against his will and without compensation.
In reality, all of these rights consist of freedom from restraint. No one can stop you from getting property, a gun, a radio station, etc. No one can stop you from finding a doctor who will care for you according to his own wishes. The time, the knowledge, the equipment, the medicines – all of these belong to the man who worked his butt off to buy them. They aren’t yours, and you have no right to claim them as your own.
Those who support statist candidates have no idea what a dangerous game they are playing. If Joe’s rights can be usurped for the benefit of Lucy, tomorrow it could be Lucy’s turn on the rack. They always see the government screwing someone else, but once that lion has been freed in the streets, no one is safe.
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Rebsarge
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS
The idea of trickle-down economics is one of the more curious ironies in modern economic thought. The first element of that irony is the name, itself. The second is that while the name was meant to belittle the concept, it accurately expresses that which makes the principle good and true.
Ronald Reagan came up with the idea that if you let people get rich, they’d spend money and it would diffuse over the entire economy and everyone would benefit. Of course, he wasn’t the first one to think this, but the statists like to pretend no one else was stupid enough to think that if a private citizen spends money on something, that money will actually go to other people.
The left holds the idea in utter contempt, and will use it as a club of sarcasm against anyone who has the nerve to intimate that all people might be better off if real affluence were possible. They call the idea “Reaganomics,” as if it were the product of a mind so sick and twisted and preposterous as to actually advocate liberty – albeit for the sake of the state.
At the core of trickle-down is a very simple proposition. Let’s say some guy buys a 10-million dollar yacht. What happens to that money? I will follow a single stream of it. Some will go to the shipyard that built the yacht, and of that, some will go to the owners, some to the designers, and some to the workers. Some of what goes to the owners will go to pay for materials, transportation, utilities, advertising, and a jillion other things. Of that which goes for materials, some will go the providers of fiberglass, some to lumberyards, some to steel mills, some to fabric mills, brass and aluminum foundries, and so on. Of that which does to the lumberyards, some will go to the owners, some to the sawyers, some to the truckers, some to the HR people, some to the secretaries, and so on… and on…. and on.
That money will go to tens of thousands of people in a never-ending cycle. Every person who gets a cut of it will either save or spend it, and even that which is saved will touch others, because the banks will loan it to entrepreneurs for startups, to young couples for houses, to hospitals for expansion… There is literally no end to it. Every person who touches any that money will benefit from it. But we can’t have that!
Enter the government. Reagan believed that by allowing that 10 million dollars to diffuse freely through the market, everyone who touched it would pay a share of it in taxes, and the government would be better off. Unfortunately, he was exactly right. Not moral, but right.
In a free economy, all of those people would decide, on their own, what to do with their cut. Anyone who wanted some of it would have to come up with something those people would be willing to trade for. Some things are obvious: food, clothing, housing, medicine, and such as that. Other things, though, are discretionary: fishing gear, new cars, pets, art, vacations – and, yes, for those statists who suffer a glandular compulsion to shriek of the horrors of freedom, some would go to booze and commercial sex. Remember these hookers; we’ll come back to them.
When people are free to act in their own best interests, there’s no telling what they might do. Scary, eh? But the government has a cure for that. The government steps in with a luxury tax, to punish that rich SOB for having 10 million bucks, in the first place. Instead of all that money going into the monetary wake of that lovely yacht, half of it goes to taxes. That means the rich guy only gets half as much yacht, so his lifestyle is cramped. The shipyard, steel mills, truckers, secretaries, and everyone else in the system has to split 5 mil instead of 10. The lifestyle of every one of those people is now cut in half, just like that of the rich guy. So the trucker has half as much to spend on necessities and luxuries. He is considerably less comfortable, but the rich guy has to slum it in a 5-million dollar yacht. Who got punished?
It sure as hell wasn’t the blood-sucking vermin in the government! That 5 mil went to people who never did a stinkin’ thing in their lives but rob those who had more courage, more vision, and more drive than they. It went to breed more treasury rats to scurry about the land, gnawing at the entrails of the people’s dreams, and at the desecrated corpse of the people’s liberty. Some of it went to New Orleans, to buy crack and booze and Chicom CD players for the “victims” of Katrina. And again, some of it went to the hookers who serve the bureaucrats.
To be sure, some of it went to relieve the worthy poor – like the mother of the trucker – the trucker who couldn’t afford to pay his mom’s rent because he was only making half what he should have. And don’t forget the hookers, whose income has strangely doubled. Oh, and some went for penicillin shots for the 13-year old Guatemalan sex slaves in Acorn’s cathouses. That’s a good investment, don’t you think?
The stark fact is that “trickle-down” means nothing more than that if people are allowed to make money and spend it, everyone but the looters benefits. That’s precisely why the statists hate it so much. They hate freedom because free men will serve their own values, not those of some two-bit thug in an imported suit. They hate happiness because happy men will find better things to do than enslaving their neighbors. They hate wealth, because having tasted it, no man with a shred of honor will ever stick his head under the yoke of poverty and dictatorship.
Two things about those hookers: they’re getting paid for doing what the rest of us are paying to have done to us, and, unlike the government, they are actually providing a service.
(PS – My spell checker told me that “cathouses” is one word, not two. It struck me as funny that a spell checker would know that – and that I wouldn’t!)
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge
Ronald Reagan came up with the idea that if you let people get rich, they’d spend money and it would diffuse over the entire economy and everyone would benefit. Of course, he wasn’t the first one to think this, but the statists like to pretend no one else was stupid enough to think that if a private citizen spends money on something, that money will actually go to other people.
The left holds the idea in utter contempt, and will use it as a club of sarcasm against anyone who has the nerve to intimate that all people might be better off if real affluence were possible. They call the idea “Reaganomics,” as if it were the product of a mind so sick and twisted and preposterous as to actually advocate liberty – albeit for the sake of the state.
At the core of trickle-down is a very simple proposition. Let’s say some guy buys a 10-million dollar yacht. What happens to that money? I will follow a single stream of it. Some will go to the shipyard that built the yacht, and of that, some will go to the owners, some to the designers, and some to the workers. Some of what goes to the owners will go to pay for materials, transportation, utilities, advertising, and a jillion other things. Of that which goes for materials, some will go the providers of fiberglass, some to lumberyards, some to steel mills, some to fabric mills, brass and aluminum foundries, and so on. Of that which does to the lumberyards, some will go to the owners, some to the sawyers, some to the truckers, some to the HR people, some to the secretaries, and so on… and on…. and on.
That money will go to tens of thousands of people in a never-ending cycle. Every person who gets a cut of it will either save or spend it, and even that which is saved will touch others, because the banks will loan it to entrepreneurs for startups, to young couples for houses, to hospitals for expansion… There is literally no end to it. Every person who touches any that money will benefit from it. But we can’t have that!
Enter the government. Reagan believed that by allowing that 10 million dollars to diffuse freely through the market, everyone who touched it would pay a share of it in taxes, and the government would be better off. Unfortunately, he was exactly right. Not moral, but right.
In a free economy, all of those people would decide, on their own, what to do with their cut. Anyone who wanted some of it would have to come up with something those people would be willing to trade for. Some things are obvious: food, clothing, housing, medicine, and such as that. Other things, though, are discretionary: fishing gear, new cars, pets, art, vacations – and, yes, for those statists who suffer a glandular compulsion to shriek of the horrors of freedom, some would go to booze and commercial sex. Remember these hookers; we’ll come back to them.
When people are free to act in their own best interests, there’s no telling what they might do. Scary, eh? But the government has a cure for that. The government steps in with a luxury tax, to punish that rich SOB for having 10 million bucks, in the first place. Instead of all that money going into the monetary wake of that lovely yacht, half of it goes to taxes. That means the rich guy only gets half as much yacht, so his lifestyle is cramped. The shipyard, steel mills, truckers, secretaries, and everyone else in the system has to split 5 mil instead of 10. The lifestyle of every one of those people is now cut in half, just like that of the rich guy. So the trucker has half as much to spend on necessities and luxuries. He is considerably less comfortable, but the rich guy has to slum it in a 5-million dollar yacht. Who got punished?
It sure as hell wasn’t the blood-sucking vermin in the government! That 5 mil went to people who never did a stinkin’ thing in their lives but rob those who had more courage, more vision, and more drive than they. It went to breed more treasury rats to scurry about the land, gnawing at the entrails of the people’s dreams, and at the desecrated corpse of the people’s liberty. Some of it went to New Orleans, to buy crack and booze and Chicom CD players for the “victims” of Katrina. And again, some of it went to the hookers who serve the bureaucrats.
To be sure, some of it went to relieve the worthy poor – like the mother of the trucker – the trucker who couldn’t afford to pay his mom’s rent because he was only making half what he should have. And don’t forget the hookers, whose income has strangely doubled. Oh, and some went for penicillin shots for the 13-year old Guatemalan sex slaves in Acorn’s cathouses. That’s a good investment, don’t you think?
The stark fact is that “trickle-down” means nothing more than that if people are allowed to make money and spend it, everyone but the looters benefits. That’s precisely why the statists hate it so much. They hate freedom because free men will serve their own values, not those of some two-bit thug in an imported suit. They hate happiness because happy men will find better things to do than enslaving their neighbors. They hate wealth, because having tasted it, no man with a shred of honor will ever stick his head under the yoke of poverty and dictatorship.
Two things about those hookers: they’re getting paid for doing what the rest of us are paying to have done to us, and, unlike the government, they are actually providing a service.
(PS – My spell checker told me that “cathouses” is one word, not two. It struck me as funny that a spell checker would know that – and that I wouldn’t!)
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Man and Freedom
Why should we be concerned about the political philosophy of those for whom we vote? Because it’s a matter of life and death. We will live as human beings ought to live, or we will die as humans and live as some other organism, based on the ideas of those we elect. I’m not going to try to give a really detailed development of these points, and I’m not going to offer a defense of them. I figure I’ve spent 20 to 30 thousand hours over the past 25 years in studying, thinking, discussing, and arguing about this. I’ve earned these conclusions. If you have different ones, make sure you’ve earned them.
Which is more appropriate for Mankind (or “Man,” as I insist on calling the human race) statism or anarchy? Fortunately, we aren’t stuck with choosing between the two extremes, and, no, I’m not advocating compromise! Compromise is like mixing manure with ice cream; it doesn’t help the manure, but it ruins the ice cream. In any compromise between wholesome food and poison, only death can win. If a rifle is shooting to the left, and the rifleman adjusts the sights to make it shoot nearer the center, that isn’t a compromise!
Man lives as an individual. He eats, sleeps, goes potty, votes, and dies as an individual. There is no such thing as “society” if the term is used to mean anything other than a collection of individuals. He is a being of an integrated mind and body. A consciousness without a body is a ghost. A body without a consciousness is a corpse. Both are symbols of death. As his body is his own, individual possession, so is his mind. Man exists in almost infinite variety, and the likelihood of two people being totally identical, mentally and physically, is zero. Whether you believe, as I do, that we were made so by God, or that we evolved so matters not a bit. Man’s consciousness is, at its core, a rational faculty, consisting of sensory mechanisms that give him information on the world around him, and a cognitive mechanism that allows him to identify, organize, evaluate, and manipulate the information provided by his senses. (For the devotees of First Officer Spock, Man’s consciousness includes emotional mechanisms that are every bit as real and valid as his more linear, or rational mechanisms. Man’s emotions spring from what he thinks about what he thinks he knows, and as such are a critical part of his rational faculties. There is no dichotomy between reason and emotion.)
Man’s means of living is the exercise of all levels of his consciousness. Since his consciousness is unique, he will settle on unique conclusions and courses of action. The things that drive and please an individual are as unique as his body and consciousness. This is his essential nature. Man can accomplish nothing without the use of his mind to direct his body. He can’t eat or go to the bathroom without it. Without it, he can’t pick berries or find grubs or plant crops or preserve canned food so that it will be wholesome for years. He can’t find, kill, or skin an animal. He can’t select a mate, love, or reproduce. For Man to live as is appropriate – that is, for Man to live as Man, rather than as some other animal – he must be free to think and to act according to his thoughts. This is equally true whether you subscribe to Evolution or to the Scriptures, which tell us, “Man is, that he might have joy.”
Without life, there can be no thinking or decision making – there can be no right or wrong. The one, immutable fundamental that makes the very existence of ethics and politics possible is life, specifically Man’s life as a rational being. Man’s life must be the standard of moral value against which all things are measured. If a political idea contributes to or protects Man’s life as Man, it is moral; if not, it is immoral. I don’t know if other philosophers understood the need for a standard of moral value, but Rand did, and her construction of what I’ve just said is exquisite and unassailable.
Anything that interferes with Man’s thinking and acting accordingly is destructive to his life as Man. It is anti-life, for to force a Man to live as a beast is to destroy his life. That which allows Man to live as Man is good and moral. A moral government is that which allows Man to live as Man, protecting his freedom to think and act on his thoughts.
Man will, by his nature, gravitate toward freedom. He will fight against that which confines or restricts him. This is human nature, and has been so from the beginning.
There is a political system that recognizes Mankind’s rights to live according to the nature of the species: Capitalism. Capitalism allows people to observe the world around them, draw conclusions based on that sensory input, and formulate plans of action according to those conclusions. More important, it allows them to act on those plans, and to reap the consequences of those actions. This is a critical distinction! The dominant political philosophy in America for the past 70-90 years has been to let people think and plan, but to either limit their actions, or to confiscate the products of those actions. We have seen great debate and much yapping and screeching about “left” and “right,” and “liberal” and “conservative,” but in reality, the only difference we see between the two is how far toward absolute tyranny they are willing to go. Actually, it may not be as much a matter of how far, as of how soon. For once we have accepted the principle that the government has the moral authority to control how free we are, the only remaining debate is over how fast we’ll go to where the government says we need to be.
My professor’s contention that the difference between liberals and conservatives is their preferred rate of change toward tyranny is probably one of the truest things he said all semester.
Now, hold it right here while I shoot hell out of a fallacy. How many times I’ve heard something on the order of, “But freedom is bad because it allows one person to bully another and take his freedom.” Bullcrap.
I stipulate as a given that all men are created equal, and are endowed with certain rights. They don’t all have equal ability, but they all have equal rights. That’s why Jefferson specifically mentioned rights. If a person does not accept this premise, the argument is over. Get out of my face or fill your hand. (Having a right and being able to exercise it are two different things, you hairsplitting, anal retentive jerk.) Can one man have a right to infringe on the rights of another? This is tantamount to saying there is a right to enslave. Absurd. The rights of one individual end where the rights of another begin. To bully someone is immoral and wrong, and the victim is within his rights to defend his liberty, even unto the shedding of blood. If a man can persuade another to do something, that’s fine. The latter has the right to choose. The problem is when the former forces something on the latter. The evil is not in what the latter was forced to do, but in the use of force, itself. In my opinion, this is one of Rand’s greatest points, that the fundamental human evil is the initiation of force. (Biblically, that was also the fundamental evil, being the one that led to the downfall of Satan. See how truth is truth, whether one finds it in the Scriptures or in the work of a feisty, Russian-born history teacher.)
Anarchy, as a political philosophy, is based on the premise that anyone has a right to do anything he can get away with, and only the skill at arms of his victim stands in his way. Such a system would lead to horrors beyond the known use of the word. Every man and woman would live in a combat footing every second of every day. The formation of alliances would be inevitable, and human society would disintegrate into a bloody cauldron of gang warfare and feudal tyranny. Anarchists are, perhaps, the only group I detest more than pacifists, and for the same root reason – they both have defaulted on the responsibility of the individual to think and distinguish right from wrong, life from death. The anarchist says, “Anything I choose to do is moral.” The pacifist says, “Anything anyone else chooses to do is moral.”
So back to the main thread. A moral government is that which allows Man to live as Man, protecting his freedom to think and act on his thoughts. As much as I respect Ronald Reagan and what he did for this country, he was dead wrong on this point. His position was, “The purpose of freedom is to allow people to work and earn, so they can pay taxes to the state. You can be free to work all you want, but we’re gonna take our cut of your product.” This is a major obscenity.
If Man, to be Man, must be allowed to sustain his own life as he sees fit, is it not obvious that he must be allowed to think, to act, and to reap the consequences of his actions? Whether we allow him to plant, and then take his crop, or not allow him to plant it in the first place, what is the moral difference? There is none. The idea that freedom is the right to work as a slave for the state is very old, and very despicable. More than that, it is vicious and savage.
In this, I believe, we see the main difference between Democrat statists and Republican statists. With some exceptions, they all recognize that people need to be free to work. They disagree only on how much the government ought to take. The current crop of statists are the most radical in American history, going so far as to say how much an individual needs to earn, and that the state has a moral prerogative to seize the excess.
The difference is one of degree, not of principle. There is an old story in which a fellow asks a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars. She thought about it, and said, “Probably.” He then asked if she’d do it for two bucks. She said, “Of course not! What kind of a girl do you think I am?” He answered, “We’ve already determined that, Darlin’. We’re just haggling the price.”
Both major parties are whores. One is cheaper and more diseased than the other.
Which is more appropriate for Mankind (or “Man,” as I insist on calling the human race) statism or anarchy? Fortunately, we aren’t stuck with choosing between the two extremes, and, no, I’m not advocating compromise! Compromise is like mixing manure with ice cream; it doesn’t help the manure, but it ruins the ice cream. In any compromise between wholesome food and poison, only death can win. If a rifle is shooting to the left, and the rifleman adjusts the sights to make it shoot nearer the center, that isn’t a compromise!
Man lives as an individual. He eats, sleeps, goes potty, votes, and dies as an individual. There is no such thing as “society” if the term is used to mean anything other than a collection of individuals. He is a being of an integrated mind and body. A consciousness without a body is a ghost. A body without a consciousness is a corpse. Both are symbols of death. As his body is his own, individual possession, so is his mind. Man exists in almost infinite variety, and the likelihood of two people being totally identical, mentally and physically, is zero. Whether you believe, as I do, that we were made so by God, or that we evolved so matters not a bit. Man’s consciousness is, at its core, a rational faculty, consisting of sensory mechanisms that give him information on the world around him, and a cognitive mechanism that allows him to identify, organize, evaluate, and manipulate the information provided by his senses. (For the devotees of First Officer Spock, Man’s consciousness includes emotional mechanisms that are every bit as real and valid as his more linear, or rational mechanisms. Man’s emotions spring from what he thinks about what he thinks he knows, and as such are a critical part of his rational faculties. There is no dichotomy between reason and emotion.)
Man’s means of living is the exercise of all levels of his consciousness. Since his consciousness is unique, he will settle on unique conclusions and courses of action. The things that drive and please an individual are as unique as his body and consciousness. This is his essential nature. Man can accomplish nothing without the use of his mind to direct his body. He can’t eat or go to the bathroom without it. Without it, he can’t pick berries or find grubs or plant crops or preserve canned food so that it will be wholesome for years. He can’t find, kill, or skin an animal. He can’t select a mate, love, or reproduce. For Man to live as is appropriate – that is, for Man to live as Man, rather than as some other animal – he must be free to think and to act according to his thoughts. This is equally true whether you subscribe to Evolution or to the Scriptures, which tell us, “Man is, that he might have joy.”
Without life, there can be no thinking or decision making – there can be no right or wrong. The one, immutable fundamental that makes the very existence of ethics and politics possible is life, specifically Man’s life as a rational being. Man’s life must be the standard of moral value against which all things are measured. If a political idea contributes to or protects Man’s life as Man, it is moral; if not, it is immoral. I don’t know if other philosophers understood the need for a standard of moral value, but Rand did, and her construction of what I’ve just said is exquisite and unassailable.
Anything that interferes with Man’s thinking and acting accordingly is destructive to his life as Man. It is anti-life, for to force a Man to live as a beast is to destroy his life. That which allows Man to live as Man is good and moral. A moral government is that which allows Man to live as Man, protecting his freedom to think and act on his thoughts.
Man will, by his nature, gravitate toward freedom. He will fight against that which confines or restricts him. This is human nature, and has been so from the beginning.
There is a political system that recognizes Mankind’s rights to live according to the nature of the species: Capitalism. Capitalism allows people to observe the world around them, draw conclusions based on that sensory input, and formulate plans of action according to those conclusions. More important, it allows them to act on those plans, and to reap the consequences of those actions. This is a critical distinction! The dominant political philosophy in America for the past 70-90 years has been to let people think and plan, but to either limit their actions, or to confiscate the products of those actions. We have seen great debate and much yapping and screeching about “left” and “right,” and “liberal” and “conservative,” but in reality, the only difference we see between the two is how far toward absolute tyranny they are willing to go. Actually, it may not be as much a matter of how far, as of how soon. For once we have accepted the principle that the government has the moral authority to control how free we are, the only remaining debate is over how fast we’ll go to where the government says we need to be.
My professor’s contention that the difference between liberals and conservatives is their preferred rate of change toward tyranny is probably one of the truest things he said all semester.
Now, hold it right here while I shoot hell out of a fallacy. How many times I’ve heard something on the order of, “But freedom is bad because it allows one person to bully another and take his freedom.” Bullcrap.
I stipulate as a given that all men are created equal, and are endowed with certain rights. They don’t all have equal ability, but they all have equal rights. That’s why Jefferson specifically mentioned rights. If a person does not accept this premise, the argument is over. Get out of my face or fill your hand. (Having a right and being able to exercise it are two different things, you hairsplitting, anal retentive jerk.) Can one man have a right to infringe on the rights of another? This is tantamount to saying there is a right to enslave. Absurd. The rights of one individual end where the rights of another begin. To bully someone is immoral and wrong, and the victim is within his rights to defend his liberty, even unto the shedding of blood. If a man can persuade another to do something, that’s fine. The latter has the right to choose. The problem is when the former forces something on the latter. The evil is not in what the latter was forced to do, but in the use of force, itself. In my opinion, this is one of Rand’s greatest points, that the fundamental human evil is the initiation of force. (Biblically, that was also the fundamental evil, being the one that led to the downfall of Satan. See how truth is truth, whether one finds it in the Scriptures or in the work of a feisty, Russian-born history teacher.)
Anarchy, as a political philosophy, is based on the premise that anyone has a right to do anything he can get away with, and only the skill at arms of his victim stands in his way. Such a system would lead to horrors beyond the known use of the word. Every man and woman would live in a combat footing every second of every day. The formation of alliances would be inevitable, and human society would disintegrate into a bloody cauldron of gang warfare and feudal tyranny. Anarchists are, perhaps, the only group I detest more than pacifists, and for the same root reason – they both have defaulted on the responsibility of the individual to think and distinguish right from wrong, life from death. The anarchist says, “Anything I choose to do is moral.” The pacifist says, “Anything anyone else chooses to do is moral.”
So back to the main thread. A moral government is that which allows Man to live as Man, protecting his freedom to think and act on his thoughts. As much as I respect Ronald Reagan and what he did for this country, he was dead wrong on this point. His position was, “The purpose of freedom is to allow people to work and earn, so they can pay taxes to the state. You can be free to work all you want, but we’re gonna take our cut of your product.” This is a major obscenity.
If Man, to be Man, must be allowed to sustain his own life as he sees fit, is it not obvious that he must be allowed to think, to act, and to reap the consequences of his actions? Whether we allow him to plant, and then take his crop, or not allow him to plant it in the first place, what is the moral difference? There is none. The idea that freedom is the right to work as a slave for the state is very old, and very despicable. More than that, it is vicious and savage.
In this, I believe, we see the main difference between Democrat statists and Republican statists. With some exceptions, they all recognize that people need to be free to work. They disagree only on how much the government ought to take. The current crop of statists are the most radical in American history, going so far as to say how much an individual needs to earn, and that the state has a moral prerogative to seize the excess.
The difference is one of degree, not of principle. There is an old story in which a fellow asks a woman if she’d sleep with him for a million dollars. She thought about it, and said, “Probably.” He then asked if she’d do it for two bucks. She said, “Of course not! What kind of a girl do you think I am?” He answered, “We’ve already determined that, Darlin’. We’re just haggling the price.”
Both major parties are whores. One is cheaper and more diseased than the other.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
ANNE FRANK TRAVESTY
Today, I took my 11-year old daughter to a mall to see the Anne Frank exhibit. We looked at the first six panels and walked out. What an atrocity! The first panel listed the fates of Anne's family, but only once mentioned the Nazi's part in their deaths. Anne and her sister died of typhus. One of her uncles was gassed, but her mother “died of exhaustion,” and other relatives just died of no apparent causes at Therezenstadt, and other such places.
The second panel was about the rise of Hitler. It mentioned Mein Kampf, but didn't go into what his dream actually was. It told about his election, but not a syllable about Krystal Nacht, the Reichstag fire, or the SA. It also talked about how unfairly Germany was held responsible for WWI - which I do happen to agree with - but it did it in such a way as to justify the rise of the Nazis.
The third panel was a painting of a running man inside a section of culvert, like a hamster in a wheel. Another man, suspended by wires, was on a bicycle on top of the culvert. Apparently, the running man was supposed to be moving the culvert so the other guy could ride. The title was "Faster!"
The fourth panel was a painting of an American soldier, suspended in the air by wires, like a marionette, with angel’s wings made of cardboard boxes. The title was "Johnny Comes Home." I suppose the reference was to the bonus marchers and the cardboard box Hoovervilles that so many WWI veterans lived in. This was a sorry chapter in America's history, no mistake, but I don't know what it had to do with the rise of Hitler, or even with a spirit of intolerance.
The fifth panel was a cut-away, like a doll house. It was populated by about 20-odd figures, made out of old clothes pins or something like that. Most of them had names, and were clearly caricatures of those people. The title of the piece was "America's House of Democracy." Most of the characters were outcasts, rebels, or criminals who have achieved some notoriety as supposedly being politically repressed. Leonard Pelitier was there, as was Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Mother Jones, and Johnny Cash. There was one mature-looking white guy holding a book that said, “The People’s History of the United States.” My daughter was assigned that book in school, and I read some of it. It could well have been published in cold war Russia, where everything of supposed virtue was “the people’s” this or that. The book says the New World was settled because Europe did not offer white males sufficient opportunity to oppress and brutalize blacks and women. One hippie-looking guy without a name held a sign saying, "The US Constitution is just one more broken promise." Michelle Obama, labeled simply, "Michelle" was in the front center, and just entering the house through a door in the background was a black man labeled, "Obama." The message of the piece was very clear – American democracy is a myth; the truth is that people who are different are repressed or murdered. I’d love to see how the artist justifies the presence in this work of Nelson Mandela and Ghandi, or how he would explain the virtual canonization of Mandela by the American left and media.
The sixth panel was a painting of a stern-looking white man, wearing a band uniform, sitting in a chair. The chair sat on a platform. The platform was held up by a man who was stooped and tortured with the effort. The man in the chair held a pair of reins that went down to a little boy on a tricycle, I believe. In front of the tricycle was a toy horse made of cardboard boxes like those that made the soldier's wings in the earlier panel. Various labels, like shipping labels, were on the horse. One of them said, "Enron" and "Haliburton," clearly a swipe at the Bush administration, a contemptible politicizing of Anne Frank. The boy and the horse were apparently pulling the man on the chair forward, while the tortured man underneath kept him off the ground. Standing behind the man who was holding the platform was a very skinny, older man, waving two sticks, one of which had a little American flag on it. In keeping with the theme of the other two paintings, both the man on the chair and the old man were strung up with wires, like marionettes.
The point of this piece was that some aristocracy - possibly military, possibly preppie - was using the people as beasts of burden, while an emaciated and presumably starved old man waved the flag of this oppressive and hypocritical nation.
I turned to Rachel and said, "We're leaving. This is despicable. Anne deserved better than this sewage."
Not one of the exhibits mentioned anything about the Nazis or other socialist tyrannies around the world. There was no indication that the US had any part in destroying the Nazis, who, of course, murdered Anne. It was altogether loathsome and shameful, and makes a terrible travesty of the wonderful, tragic life that was snuffed by the very socialist/statists the producers of the exhibit apparently idolize.
This exhibit is an outrageous piece of anti-Americana. I was infuriated and sickened. My daughter and I had a good, long chat about socialism versus individualism, and democracy versus a republic. She grasped these concepts instantly. I told her, “ You have just put yourself ahead of 99 percent of the college professors in this country.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Rebsarge
The second panel was about the rise of Hitler. It mentioned Mein Kampf, but didn't go into what his dream actually was. It told about his election, but not a syllable about Krystal Nacht, the Reichstag fire, or the SA. It also talked about how unfairly Germany was held responsible for WWI - which I do happen to agree with - but it did it in such a way as to justify the rise of the Nazis.
The third panel was a painting of a running man inside a section of culvert, like a hamster in a wheel. Another man, suspended by wires, was on a bicycle on top of the culvert. Apparently, the running man was supposed to be moving the culvert so the other guy could ride. The title was "Faster!"
The fourth panel was a painting of an American soldier, suspended in the air by wires, like a marionette, with angel’s wings made of cardboard boxes. The title was "Johnny Comes Home." I suppose the reference was to the bonus marchers and the cardboard box Hoovervilles that so many WWI veterans lived in. This was a sorry chapter in America's history, no mistake, but I don't know what it had to do with the rise of Hitler, or even with a spirit of intolerance.
The fifth panel was a cut-away, like a doll house. It was populated by about 20-odd figures, made out of old clothes pins or something like that. Most of them had names, and were clearly caricatures of those people. The title of the piece was "America's House of Democracy." Most of the characters were outcasts, rebels, or criminals who have achieved some notoriety as supposedly being politically repressed. Leonard Pelitier was there, as was Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Mother Jones, and Johnny Cash. There was one mature-looking white guy holding a book that said, “The People’s History of the United States.” My daughter was assigned that book in school, and I read some of it. It could well have been published in cold war Russia, where everything of supposed virtue was “the people’s” this or that. The book says the New World was settled because Europe did not offer white males sufficient opportunity to oppress and brutalize blacks and women. One hippie-looking guy without a name held a sign saying, "The US Constitution is just one more broken promise." Michelle Obama, labeled simply, "Michelle" was in the front center, and just entering the house through a door in the background was a black man labeled, "Obama." The message of the piece was very clear – American democracy is a myth; the truth is that people who are different are repressed or murdered. I’d love to see how the artist justifies the presence in this work of Nelson Mandela and Ghandi, or how he would explain the virtual canonization of Mandela by the American left and media.
The sixth panel was a painting of a stern-looking white man, wearing a band uniform, sitting in a chair. The chair sat on a platform. The platform was held up by a man who was stooped and tortured with the effort. The man in the chair held a pair of reins that went down to a little boy on a tricycle, I believe. In front of the tricycle was a toy horse made of cardboard boxes like those that made the soldier's wings in the earlier panel. Various labels, like shipping labels, were on the horse. One of them said, "Enron" and "Haliburton," clearly a swipe at the Bush administration, a contemptible politicizing of Anne Frank. The boy and the horse were apparently pulling the man on the chair forward, while the tortured man underneath kept him off the ground. Standing behind the man who was holding the platform was a very skinny, older man, waving two sticks, one of which had a little American flag on it. In keeping with the theme of the other two paintings, both the man on the chair and the old man were strung up with wires, like marionettes.
The point of this piece was that some aristocracy - possibly military, possibly preppie - was using the people as beasts of burden, while an emaciated and presumably starved old man waved the flag of this oppressive and hypocritical nation.
I turned to Rachel and said, "We're leaving. This is despicable. Anne deserved better than this sewage."
Not one of the exhibits mentioned anything about the Nazis or other socialist tyrannies around the world. There was no indication that the US had any part in destroying the Nazis, who, of course, murdered Anne. It was altogether loathsome and shameful, and makes a terrible travesty of the wonderful, tragic life that was snuffed by the very socialist/statists the producers of the exhibit apparently idolize.
This exhibit is an outrageous piece of anti-Americana. I was infuriated and sickened. My daughter and I had a good, long chat about socialism versus individualism, and democracy versus a republic. She grasped these concepts instantly. I told her, “ You have just put yourself ahead of 99 percent of the college professors in this country.”
Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Rebsarge
FOR THE CHILDREN
Whenever the statists want us to swallow something we’d ordinarily spit out, they invoke the idea that it’s “for the children.” What a despicable lie!
The idea that something is okay as long as it isn’t for oneself is based in the lie of altruism. Stop and think about how many times someone has attempted to justify some crime or stupidity by saying, “But it wasn’t for me! I did it for the children.” I was watching a movie the other night, and one of the characters had committed some really awful crimes and was trying to convince his daughter he wasn’t a scumbag. He said, “But I did it for you! It wasn’t for me!”
There is a phrase, once commonly used in politics, that describes this concept, for it is not new. Politicians would put together a bill that no sane person would ever consider, but then they’d put in a rider for something no sane person could object to. They called it a “widows and orphans” bill, meaning that no one could possibly object to a bill that helped widows and orphans. Never mind that the other parts of it would virtually enslave the orphans and drive the widows to the waterfront cribs.
“For the children” is the new watermark of the widows and orphans bill.
Currently, they are talking about how the stimulus and bailout measures were for the children. Without them, our children would suffer want. Never mind that with them, our children would be under the yoke of debt to the Chicoms for the next 10 generations.
The greatest sham on the market today is global warming. We are told we must virtually destroy all industrialization for the children. We must take away their freedom on a limit never before envisioned by Americans. We must get them accustomed to living in pre-industrial squalor and darkness. We must make them forget the freedom of moving around the world, and hammer them into the feudal mindset in which no one ever traveled more than a day’s walk from his home.
Another tried and true for the children idea is gun control. “We must ban guns for the children.” My personal favorite is, “Gun control won’t reduce crime or violence, but if it saves the life of one child, it’s worth it!” Let’s not, under any circumstances, consider the children who will suffer or die because their parents were disarmed!
In February of ’79, a guy wrecked his car in front of my house. I went out to see if he was hurt. He climbed out and attacked me. I fought him for nearly 30 minutes. My wife had called 911 before I went outside, but we caught the cops at shift change. I beat that sucker bad – he was peeing through a catheter for a week from my kick, and needed 40-odd stitches to sew his face back on. He had a severe concussion from a blow to the head. He wasn’t even slowed down because he was full of Budweiser and angel dust. When I got away from him and got back into the house, I was pretty much done fighting because of three dislocated knuckles and a torn ligament in my hip. He kicked my front door open, splitting a solid oak, inch-and-a-quarter door, and announced his intention to kill me. Behind me were my grandsons, ages about 8 and 10, and my wife. I shot the sucker. At the last instant, I pulled the shot low, so it went in around his navel and ranged to his left and downward, nicking his sciatic nerve and barely missing his kidney. When the law finally arrived, they had to tie him hand and foot to get him in the ambulance. He bit a cop and kicked one of the medics in the mouth. When I called the hospital and asked if he would make it, the nurse said, “Yeah, the asshole will live to get shot again.”
Now in this one, tiny, isolated incident, I’m absolutely certain that, if I hadn’t had that pistol, he’d have stomped me to death and done heaven knows what to my wife and grandsons.
So the critical question is, how many children’s lives will be destroyed by gun control? If gun control saves one child and leads to the deaths or hundreds, where’s the moral high ground? If an economic measure saves, say, the rubber eyelash industry, but destroys free enterprise so that untold generations of children will live in feudal serfdom, how can this possibly be “for the children?" The answer is obvious: it isn’t for the children, at all; it’s for the statists with their unbounded thirst for power and dominion over their fellow man.
Our children don’t need to see themselves as wards – virtual chattels – of the state, living, moving, marrying, procreating, and breathing only as the state allows. They don’t need to grow up seeing their parents as creatures held in intellectual and economic chains by thugs whose only claim to authority is that they are “the government.” They don’t need to grow up believing that effort is punished, that success is crushed, that vision is stripped and raped on the evening news.
Our children need to see themselves as capable of managing their own destiny – of solving pollution problems – of solving crime problems – of solving economic problems. Indeed, the only possible solution for any of these problems is that we and our children be allowed the freedom to create a world that reflects the highest ideals of our souls. They need to believe that they can use their sovereign, rational minds effectively to direct their own lives as free men and women, creating, building, succeeding, failing, and trying again. They need to understand that the true glory of the human race is not to be found in pounding the lot of us into the mud so that we are all equally wretched and destitute. It is to be found in the triumph of the human mind and will over nature, and triumph cannot be glorious unless it is challenged and earned.
American children have the highest standard of living in the world. They are safer,
better-fed and –educated than any other population. This is because they live in a free country that is governed by laws rather than by men. Our children’s parents have been able to work for wages, or to build their own businesses and hire others, and this very simple, basic fact has done more to guarantee the health, security, and happiness – even the very lives – of our children than all the statist tyranny in the history of mankind.
That which destroys a man’s ability to care for his children cannot be for the good of the children. That which places children in the position of looking at the future with eyes preconditioned to slavery and statist control of their very lives cannot be for their good. That which unravels hundreds of years of human progress and places our children and grandchildren in the position of the pre-industrial wretches who died by the millions from disease and hunger cannot be for the good of the children.
What is truly, “for the children?” Freedom! Honor! Self-determination! Capitalism! Individual rights and liberty! Anything else is not for the children, but for the tyrants, and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt, and, if they will not cease their pursuit of our lives, something more forceful.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge.
The idea that something is okay as long as it isn’t for oneself is based in the lie of altruism. Stop and think about how many times someone has attempted to justify some crime or stupidity by saying, “But it wasn’t for me! I did it for the children.” I was watching a movie the other night, and one of the characters had committed some really awful crimes and was trying to convince his daughter he wasn’t a scumbag. He said, “But I did it for you! It wasn’t for me!”
There is a phrase, once commonly used in politics, that describes this concept, for it is not new. Politicians would put together a bill that no sane person would ever consider, but then they’d put in a rider for something no sane person could object to. They called it a “widows and orphans” bill, meaning that no one could possibly object to a bill that helped widows and orphans. Never mind that the other parts of it would virtually enslave the orphans and drive the widows to the waterfront cribs.
“For the children” is the new watermark of the widows and orphans bill.
Currently, they are talking about how the stimulus and bailout measures were for the children. Without them, our children would suffer want. Never mind that with them, our children would be under the yoke of debt to the Chicoms for the next 10 generations.
The greatest sham on the market today is global warming. We are told we must virtually destroy all industrialization for the children. We must take away their freedom on a limit never before envisioned by Americans. We must get them accustomed to living in pre-industrial squalor and darkness. We must make them forget the freedom of moving around the world, and hammer them into the feudal mindset in which no one ever traveled more than a day’s walk from his home.
Another tried and true for the children idea is gun control. “We must ban guns for the children.” My personal favorite is, “Gun control won’t reduce crime or violence, but if it saves the life of one child, it’s worth it!” Let’s not, under any circumstances, consider the children who will suffer or die because their parents were disarmed!
In February of ’79, a guy wrecked his car in front of my house. I went out to see if he was hurt. He climbed out and attacked me. I fought him for nearly 30 minutes. My wife had called 911 before I went outside, but we caught the cops at shift change. I beat that sucker bad – he was peeing through a catheter for a week from my kick, and needed 40-odd stitches to sew his face back on. He had a severe concussion from a blow to the head. He wasn’t even slowed down because he was full of Budweiser and angel dust. When I got away from him and got back into the house, I was pretty much done fighting because of three dislocated knuckles and a torn ligament in my hip. He kicked my front door open, splitting a solid oak, inch-and-a-quarter door, and announced his intention to kill me. Behind me were my grandsons, ages about 8 and 10, and my wife. I shot the sucker. At the last instant, I pulled the shot low, so it went in around his navel and ranged to his left and downward, nicking his sciatic nerve and barely missing his kidney. When the law finally arrived, they had to tie him hand and foot to get him in the ambulance. He bit a cop and kicked one of the medics in the mouth. When I called the hospital and asked if he would make it, the nurse said, “Yeah, the asshole will live to get shot again.”
Now in this one, tiny, isolated incident, I’m absolutely certain that, if I hadn’t had that pistol, he’d have stomped me to death and done heaven knows what to my wife and grandsons.
So the critical question is, how many children’s lives will be destroyed by gun control? If gun control saves one child and leads to the deaths or hundreds, where’s the moral high ground? If an economic measure saves, say, the rubber eyelash industry, but destroys free enterprise so that untold generations of children will live in feudal serfdom, how can this possibly be “for the children?" The answer is obvious: it isn’t for the children, at all; it’s for the statists with their unbounded thirst for power and dominion over their fellow man.
Our children don’t need to see themselves as wards – virtual chattels – of the state, living, moving, marrying, procreating, and breathing only as the state allows. They don’t need to grow up seeing their parents as creatures held in intellectual and economic chains by thugs whose only claim to authority is that they are “the government.” They don’t need to grow up believing that effort is punished, that success is crushed, that vision is stripped and raped on the evening news.
Our children need to see themselves as capable of managing their own destiny – of solving pollution problems – of solving crime problems – of solving economic problems. Indeed, the only possible solution for any of these problems is that we and our children be allowed the freedom to create a world that reflects the highest ideals of our souls. They need to believe that they can use their sovereign, rational minds effectively to direct their own lives as free men and women, creating, building, succeeding, failing, and trying again. They need to understand that the true glory of the human race is not to be found in pounding the lot of us into the mud so that we are all equally wretched and destitute. It is to be found in the triumph of the human mind and will over nature, and triumph cannot be glorious unless it is challenged and earned.
American children have the highest standard of living in the world. They are safer,
better-fed and –educated than any other population. This is because they live in a free country that is governed by laws rather than by men. Our children’s parents have been able to work for wages, or to build their own businesses and hire others, and this very simple, basic fact has done more to guarantee the health, security, and happiness – even the very lives – of our children than all the statist tyranny in the history of mankind.
That which destroys a man’s ability to care for his children cannot be for the good of the children. That which places children in the position of looking at the future with eyes preconditioned to slavery and statist control of their very lives cannot be for their good. That which unravels hundreds of years of human progress and places our children and grandchildren in the position of the pre-industrial wretches who died by the millions from disease and hunger cannot be for the good of the children.
What is truly, “for the children?” Freedom! Honor! Self-determination! Capitalism! Individual rights and liberty! Anything else is not for the children, but for the tyrants, and deserves nothing but scorn and contempt, and, if they will not cease their pursuit of our lives, something more forceful.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Haiku-a-day
I took a creative writing class my senior year in high school. Mrs. Meleski, bless her, was a great teacher! In that class, I formed a couple of friendships that endure to this day. I also developed a taste for the Japanese poetry form known as haiku. There's about a jillion variations, but the one I learned first was a triplet that had five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. The haiku is a perfect form for the person how has observations on things, but not a lot of time - or in my case, talent - to write a lot. Because of the discipline required, haiku can be very evocative and profound. Like a Japanese sand garden, they are austere and direct.
This morning, on the way to work, I saw a bit of nature that inspired a haiku, and got thinking that maybe I'd set myself a challenge. I'm going to try to write a haiku a day for a year. Don't know if I'll make it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've never challenged my creativity this way.
And yes, I've watched, "Julie and Julia" twice, and enjoyed it, so that probably has a good deal to do with this impulse.
So here we go.
***************************************************
Well, I almost made it. I got to the 5th of March. It was fun, and not too stressful, but in the end, the stuff that was stressful just buried this project. I'll probably still add to it occasionally. In fact, I composed a haiku this morning, while I was working outside at my property in the South Valley of Albuquerque.
This morning, on the way to work, I saw a bit of nature that inspired a haiku, and got thinking that maybe I'd set myself a challenge. I'm going to try to write a haiku a day for a year. Don't know if I'll make it, but I'm going to give it a shot. I've never challenged my creativity this way.
And yes, I've watched, "Julie and Julia" twice, and enjoyed it, so that probably has a good deal to do with this impulse.
So here we go.
***************************************************
Well, I almost made it. I got to the 5th of March. It was fun, and not too stressful, but in the end, the stuff that was stressful just buried this project. I'll probably still add to it occasionally. In fact, I composed a haiku this morning, while I was working outside at my property in the South Valley of Albuquerque.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
WEALTH AND SLAVERY
THE SOURCE OF WEALTH
The statists will be stunned to hear this, but they and the government are not the source of wealth, and they sure as hell aren’t the source of anybody’s “fair share.”
The advertisements for the census are driving me nuts – though, to be sure, it’s a very short drive! One of the two that get me the most has been on TV, and shows various American Indians. The theme is that if they don’t participate in the census, they can’t be part of the “community,” and won’t get all they’ve got coming to them. This ad is obscene on several levels. First, it assumes that all American Indians are welfare parasites. Second, it assumes that they will all be moved by a call from “the tribe” – no racism there, eh? Third, it claims that, by filling out a few lines on a form, their membership in the tribe gives them a right to some of my property – their fair share of my property, to be precise.
The other ad has been on the radio. It begins by supposing that if we had 100 children, we’d need 5 teachers. Next year, however, we might have a lot more children, and we’d still only have 5 teachers, and if we don’t fill out the census, how will the government know what is our fair share of someone else’s property? This ad makes assumptions quite similar to the first, with one addition. It also presupposes that education and infrastructure thereunto pertaining can only come from the government.
A very, very interesting common denominator in the two ads is the us-against-them undertone. The “us” is the identified group: American Indians in the first, and some unspecified community in the second. The “them” is other parasites who are apparently competing for shares of the spoils. It is my experience that all statists appeal to a desire they presume to be in all of us to control our neighbors. It’s never, “We will stick a gun in YOUR ribs to get money to give to THEM.” It’s always and ever, “We will stick a gun in THEIR ribs to get money to give YOU.” People who live in planned communities with very strict and oppressive covenants never think about those covenants keeping THEM from doing something. They are always thinking of how the covenants will allow them to stick it to their neighbors. They have a very one-way view of the law, and obviously have never considered this axiom:
RIGHTS THAT ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY PROTECTED
ARE UNIVERSALLY THREATENED.
Individual people can work to earn money, save that money, and invest it. By so doing, they can help in the creation of wealth. A cash investment, added to the genius and hard work of an entrepreneur in a free economy can generate considerably more cash than the original investment.
Government produces only one thing, and it isn’t wealth. The theory of the statists is that cash in the hands of the government is invested far more wisely and justly than that same wealth in the hands of those who created and earned it. This theory also holds that the individual will be motivated by self-interest, or a desire to live better, whereas the government will be motivated solely by altruism and a desire to rescue the downtrodden from the greedy brutes who might otherwise expect them to actually work for their sustenance! This ignores entirely an inconvenient truth (sorry, Al!): (A) that governments are comprised of individual humans, each with his own desire to live better, and, (B) that people applying for their fair share of the property of others are likewise motivated, and might, just maybe, in the odd instance here and there, lie through their damned teeth in order to get more stuff!
Let me ask you this: what is your fair share of something that was taken, under threat of armed force, from your neighbor? Does it seem odd to juxtapose such concepts as “fair” and “theft” in the same sentence? This is an obscenity so despicable as to be a fitting companion to the Islamic custom of stoning to death little girls who have been raped. I am criticized for dealing in hyperbole. Bull poop. Show me a definition of slavery that does not include some variation on being forced – ie, by force of arms – without being duly compensated for you labor. Show me that, and I’ll show you Barack Obama’s dictionary!
Heresy, I hear the cry! Does not the poor, downtrodden working stiff labor without compensation?
No. He doesn’t. If he wants to make more, he can ask for a raise, or he can find another job. School might be an option, and America is filled with schools for adults that are supported most liberally by charity, or by bond issues agreed upon by those who will pay for them.
Next comes, “Why, you hypocrite!” Well, let’s see. I’m a 61-year old white guy with no degree. That puts me in the snowball’s chance in hell division. It frustrates me no end, but the worst of it is that I – I – me – myself, alone – made the decision in 1985 to drop out of college and devote my time to a job that promised short-term compensation with zero future. Can’t blame nobody else for that one.
No government can give something to one person without first having taken it from another. Period. It is prerequisite that, before we can have recipients, we must have donors. Free people support charities, and if you doubt that, look at the astonishing tsunami of wealth we have sent to Haiti. That most of it will end up in the hands of the UN, or of dictators who are to blame for the wretchedness of the nation, in the first place is beside the point. People are generous, and Americans are especially so. Why? Because we have it to share. And why do we have it to share? Because, until recently, we’ve been free, and, even with the constant, growing cancer of government over the past 40 years, we’re still more free and more wealthy than any nation on earth.
Wealth does not pop into existence by spontaneous generation. It is created by thinking, working, humans. The difference between a pile of rock and a magnificent steel bridge is human action. (Thank you, Ludwig.) Statists don’t understand that. They think they can just order the rock around and the bridge will happen. It’s precisely the same delusion by which they think they can order producers to magically generate enough wealth to feed the infinite gluttony of parasitical government employees and welfare pillagers.
The only thing government produces is armed force, and it is by use of this product that it takes property from those who earned it and gives it to those who did not. The difference between charity, which is a commandment of Our Father in Heaven, and welfare is armed force. Charity is voluntary; taxation is slavery. Here’s another little tidbit: the statists just love the Black racists who demand reparation for the suffering of their ancestors under slavery. They also just love to enslave modern Blacks – along with everyone else – under the yoke of statist dictatorship.
Like a ferret in a henhouse, government requires constant restraint in the presence of the liberty of its citizens.
The statists always invoke “the children,” with this little piteous tremble of their chins. Before the industrial revolution, children died by the millions. After the industrial revolution, the mortality rate is less than by orders of magnitude what it was. And do you know why where was child labor during the industrial revolution? Because there were children! Yep. Children were living longer, and instead of burying them in their infancy, folks had to feed and clothe the little buggers, and because the “revolution” occurred pretty suddenly, it took a while for things like wages – which were a bloody radical idea – to catch up. Without freedom, the industrial revolution could never have happened.
So the statists want to destroy the freedom that was and is instrumental in keeping so many children alive long enough to be a burden on their parents. Where is infant mortality highest? In the free countries or the dictatorships? I’ll give you a minute to think that through. Time’s up. Dictatorships kill vastly more people of all ages than do free countries. You can look it up in Snopes.
It was liberty that gave us the wealth to create the lifestyle that allows our children to live to maturity. It was liberty that gave us the medicine the statists wish to destroy. It was statism that created the idiotic laws and protections that allowed the banking and finance industry to squander trillions in building a house of paper and kerosene. How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that destroying freedom and establishing tyranny is good for the children?
They don’t believe that. They bloody well know the consequence of their actions. They are motivated by a seething, septic hatred of humanity. Don’t ever think otherwise.
The statists will be stunned to hear this, but they and the government are not the source of wealth, and they sure as hell aren’t the source of anybody’s “fair share.”
The advertisements for the census are driving me nuts – though, to be sure, it’s a very short drive! One of the two that get me the most has been on TV, and shows various American Indians. The theme is that if they don’t participate in the census, they can’t be part of the “community,” and won’t get all they’ve got coming to them. This ad is obscene on several levels. First, it assumes that all American Indians are welfare parasites. Second, it assumes that they will all be moved by a call from “the tribe” – no racism there, eh? Third, it claims that, by filling out a few lines on a form, their membership in the tribe gives them a right to some of my property – their fair share of my property, to be precise.
The other ad has been on the radio. It begins by supposing that if we had 100 children, we’d need 5 teachers. Next year, however, we might have a lot more children, and we’d still only have 5 teachers, and if we don’t fill out the census, how will the government know what is our fair share of someone else’s property? This ad makes assumptions quite similar to the first, with one addition. It also presupposes that education and infrastructure thereunto pertaining can only come from the government.
A very, very interesting common denominator in the two ads is the us-against-them undertone. The “us” is the identified group: American Indians in the first, and some unspecified community in the second. The “them” is other parasites who are apparently competing for shares of the spoils. It is my experience that all statists appeal to a desire they presume to be in all of us to control our neighbors. It’s never, “We will stick a gun in YOUR ribs to get money to give to THEM.” It’s always and ever, “We will stick a gun in THEIR ribs to get money to give YOU.” People who live in planned communities with very strict and oppressive covenants never think about those covenants keeping THEM from doing something. They are always thinking of how the covenants will allow them to stick it to their neighbors. They have a very one-way view of the law, and obviously have never considered this axiom:
RIGHTS THAT ARE NOT UNIVERSALLY PROTECTED
ARE UNIVERSALLY THREATENED.
Individual people can work to earn money, save that money, and invest it. By so doing, they can help in the creation of wealth. A cash investment, added to the genius and hard work of an entrepreneur in a free economy can generate considerably more cash than the original investment.
Government produces only one thing, and it isn’t wealth. The theory of the statists is that cash in the hands of the government is invested far more wisely and justly than that same wealth in the hands of those who created and earned it. This theory also holds that the individual will be motivated by self-interest, or a desire to live better, whereas the government will be motivated solely by altruism and a desire to rescue the downtrodden from the greedy brutes who might otherwise expect them to actually work for their sustenance! This ignores entirely an inconvenient truth (sorry, Al!): (A) that governments are comprised of individual humans, each with his own desire to live better, and, (B) that people applying for their fair share of the property of others are likewise motivated, and might, just maybe, in the odd instance here and there, lie through their damned teeth in order to get more stuff!
Let me ask you this: what is your fair share of something that was taken, under threat of armed force, from your neighbor? Does it seem odd to juxtapose such concepts as “fair” and “theft” in the same sentence? This is an obscenity so despicable as to be a fitting companion to the Islamic custom of stoning to death little girls who have been raped. I am criticized for dealing in hyperbole. Bull poop. Show me a definition of slavery that does not include some variation on being forced – ie, by force of arms – without being duly compensated for you labor. Show me that, and I’ll show you Barack Obama’s dictionary!
Heresy, I hear the cry! Does not the poor, downtrodden working stiff labor without compensation?
No. He doesn’t. If he wants to make more, he can ask for a raise, or he can find another job. School might be an option, and America is filled with schools for adults that are supported most liberally by charity, or by bond issues agreed upon by those who will pay for them.
Next comes, “Why, you hypocrite!” Well, let’s see. I’m a 61-year old white guy with no degree. That puts me in the snowball’s chance in hell division. It frustrates me no end, but the worst of it is that I – I – me – myself, alone – made the decision in 1985 to drop out of college and devote my time to a job that promised short-term compensation with zero future. Can’t blame nobody else for that one.
No government can give something to one person without first having taken it from another. Period. It is prerequisite that, before we can have recipients, we must have donors. Free people support charities, and if you doubt that, look at the astonishing tsunami of wealth we have sent to Haiti. That most of it will end up in the hands of the UN, or of dictators who are to blame for the wretchedness of the nation, in the first place is beside the point. People are generous, and Americans are especially so. Why? Because we have it to share. And why do we have it to share? Because, until recently, we’ve been free, and, even with the constant, growing cancer of government over the past 40 years, we’re still more free and more wealthy than any nation on earth.
Wealth does not pop into existence by spontaneous generation. It is created by thinking, working, humans. The difference between a pile of rock and a magnificent steel bridge is human action. (Thank you, Ludwig.) Statists don’t understand that. They think they can just order the rock around and the bridge will happen. It’s precisely the same delusion by which they think they can order producers to magically generate enough wealth to feed the infinite gluttony of parasitical government employees and welfare pillagers.
The only thing government produces is armed force, and it is by use of this product that it takes property from those who earned it and gives it to those who did not. The difference between charity, which is a commandment of Our Father in Heaven, and welfare is armed force. Charity is voluntary; taxation is slavery. Here’s another little tidbit: the statists just love the Black racists who demand reparation for the suffering of their ancestors under slavery. They also just love to enslave modern Blacks – along with everyone else – under the yoke of statist dictatorship.
Like a ferret in a henhouse, government requires constant restraint in the presence of the liberty of its citizens.
The statists always invoke “the children,” with this little piteous tremble of their chins. Before the industrial revolution, children died by the millions. After the industrial revolution, the mortality rate is less than by orders of magnitude what it was. And do you know why where was child labor during the industrial revolution? Because there were children! Yep. Children were living longer, and instead of burying them in their infancy, folks had to feed and clothe the little buggers, and because the “revolution” occurred pretty suddenly, it took a while for things like wages – which were a bloody radical idea – to catch up. Without freedom, the industrial revolution could never have happened.
So the statists want to destroy the freedom that was and is instrumental in keeping so many children alive long enough to be a burden on their parents. Where is infant mortality highest? In the free countries or the dictatorships? I’ll give you a minute to think that through. Time’s up. Dictatorships kill vastly more people of all ages than do free countries. You can look it up in Snopes.
It was liberty that gave us the wealth to create the lifestyle that allows our children to live to maturity. It was liberty that gave us the medicine the statists wish to destroy. It was statism that created the idiotic laws and protections that allowed the banking and finance industry to squander trillions in building a house of paper and kerosene. How can anyone be stupid enough to believe that destroying freedom and establishing tyranny is good for the children?
They don’t believe that. They bloody well know the consequence of their actions. They are motivated by a seething, septic hatred of humanity. Don’t ever think otherwise.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
values
4 Feb., 2010
VALUES
Like just about any other aspect of philosophy, the subject of values has taken a real whipping. Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to set the world straight on values. Much of what I’m about to say must be attributed to Ayn Rand, though hearing herself praised by a Mormon probably has her making about 1800 RPM in her grave.
Let’s take an unusual tack here, and start with a definition of “values.” A good definition will take most of the guesswork out of the rest of the subject. Value can be a verb or a noun. For right now, I’m talking about the noun, as in, “a value.” A value is anything a person takes action to gain or to keep. That’s it. Now there are a million other definitions, but I’ve never heard one that cut to the heart of the matter, and was instantly recognizable as fundamental. This definition, however, demands more discussion than can be put on a bumper sticker.
A lot of folks will try to tell you that X is a value, but Y is not. Baloney. It depends on the person doing the valuing! That’s the first real shocker here: without rational beings thinking and acting on their own volition, there are no values, because there’s no one to value anything. Without people desiring money, it could not be a value. Without people to desire life, it could not be a value. So, first of all, we are not talking about something that exists as an isolated concrete.
Anything can be a value. Socialists always sneer at money, because, knowing nothing about money, they think it is the only thing of value. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve said something about, “my values,” and been attacked for saying money is the most important thing in the world. They honestly believe that “value,” like “Yankee,” is half a word; they think the whole thing is “monetaryvalue.” Anyone who admits to valuing money in the presence of a socialist had better either have his foot in the stirrup or his holster unsnapped.
I’ve also had people say, “I’m not religious, so values aren’t important to me,” or, “I don’t have a family, so I don’t have any values.” How tragic that the Left has been so successful in perverting and twisting such a crucial subject.
A person can be a value. A ball, a book, a model airplane, freedom, a friend, a dog, a house, a car, money, righteousness, family, relationships…. All of these are things that person might act to gain or to keep, so all can be values. Note, I did not say, “…all ARE values!” To say that something IS a value is to imply that it is of value, purely in and of itself, without respect to a human being who is willing to act to gain or to keep it. Now it’s perfectly legitimate to say, ‘That IS one of my values,” because you are a human being, and you are simply stating a fact of your consciousness.
We are individuals, each having his own mind and consciousness, and therefore, each having his own values. Values are things of the mind. “Value” exists only in the mind, and as such, they are intensely personal and individual. It’s possible for a group of people to share values, but it is not possible for the group, itself, to have values, because the group is only a collection of individuals. This is true whether you believe you evolved into what you are, or that you were created by God.
Some folks say, “Oh, he doesn’t have any values, at all.” Baloney. Everybody has values. Some people value things like their children, their freedom, their independence, etc., and other people value things like staying stoned, being stimulated by pornography, or having power over their neighbors. The desirability of something depends on the standard of moral value by which you judge good and bad. Just as you need a standard of value called a ruler to measure the length of something, you need a standard to measure the value of something. If your life as a human being – rational, independent, free, loving, creative, etc – is your greatest value, you will also value things that support that fundamental value. Your life, then becomes your standard of value.
On the other hand, if staying stoned is your greatest value, you will also value things that support that value. Staying stoned becomes the standard by which you measure good or bad, desirable or not desirable.
One of the greatest and most contemptible mockeries of values is the term, “family values. Does it mean things that contribute to a strong and happy family? Does it mean things that guarantee a lot of babies that can be sold on the world market? Does it mean a lot of daughters so the patriarch can have plenty of slaves? I can guarantee there are interpretations of the term “family values” that would gag a buzzard off a gut wagon!
So if anything can be a value, are there good and bad values? Your durned right! To be precise, there are good and bad standards of value. There is only one legitimate, absolutely fundamental standard of value: life, and specifically, life as a human being. Without this, there can be no values, at all; the entire subject could never come up if we were all dead. Life as a human being is the only truly fundamental standard of moral value.
Fundamental. There’s a term you don’t hear very often. It means there’s nothing greater than that one, fundamental thing. When you have a decision, you refer to your standard of moral value. Does course X or course Y support or promote your standard of value? If your standard of moral value is being popular, you will make your decision based on which will make you most popular. But suppose there’s a decision that transcends popularity – perhaps the welfare of a loved one. Your standard of moral value won’t help you answer that question because the matter has nothing to do with popularity.
We must temporarily play “lifeboat,” though I must caution against basing your values on lifeboat ethics. The world is not a lifeboat, ie not every decision must be based on whether you or the other guy dies. As an exercise, though, it can be very instructive to think about decisions in terms of promoting or protecting your life. Deciding if you are going to have the appetizer portion or the whole enchilada will not require you to ask which will contribute most to your life. You pick the one you like most, or feel most in the mood for, and that’s that. But never forget that, ultimately all decisions can be traced to your standard of value. Another way to think about it is that all decisions can be, if you want to work at it, reduced to the lowest common denominator, like a fraction.
(If you look at the things promoted and supported by statists, and think about the standard of value upon which they are based, you can see the “lifeboat ethics” implicit in their values. With them, everything is a matter of somebody dying if we don’t pass this tax law, or that bail out package. They will never offer everyday solutions to things because their philosophy has nothing to do with life. They are anti-life. Being in a lifeboat and having to decide who you’re going to eat is not an everyday situation, so it makes a lousy thing to base your values on! That doesn’t keep liberals from doing it.)
There’s a mess of folks out there with really screwed up standards of value. That’s their right, according to the rational nature of Man, and you can’t morally interfere with it. But you sure don’t have to pal around with ‘em, or trust ‘em behind your back! People whose standard of value is to have power over other people are especially dangerous, which is why proficiency at and possession of arms is a very life-promoting value! (It’s also why all liberals and other statists are universally against our having guns – and against term limits!)
A human being must be free to exercise his rational faculty, from primary senses to the most abstract conceptualization. Out of the rational process will come values. A human being must be free to pursue his values. The pursuit of our own values is one of the greatest glories of humanity; it has produced all of our art, our science, and our happiness. It may not be strictly correct to say that Man is the rational animal, but he is most certainly the animal that lives by rationality; he is a goal-directed animal.
There is what seems to be a horrific contradiction in this: cannot an individual place zero value on rationality? Yes, and in that case, the things he values must always come from others. If he would eat, someone else must value him enough to take action to gain food for him. Someone else must provide, by their own rationality and free will, everything he needs to survive. He becomes a slave to others. It seems odd to think of a thief as a slave, but he is: he lives only so long as his victims have the things he values, so he can steal from them. Similarly, a liar is a slave to the person to whom he has lied, because if that person stops believing him, his crummy little game is up.
No human can live without the mind and the actions directed by it. If one chooses to not use his own mind, he will live as a parasite off those who use theirs. The free exercise of the human mind means the pursuit of goals, which means the pursuit of values. Some people value things that contribute to life, others value things that are harmful to life.
VALUES
Like just about any other aspect of philosophy, the subject of values has taken a real whipping. Well, I’d like to take this opportunity to set the world straight on values. Much of what I’m about to say must be attributed to Ayn Rand, though hearing herself praised by a Mormon probably has her making about 1800 RPM in her grave.
Let’s take an unusual tack here, and start with a definition of “values.” A good definition will take most of the guesswork out of the rest of the subject. Value can be a verb or a noun. For right now, I’m talking about the noun, as in, “a value.” A value is anything a person takes action to gain or to keep. That’s it. Now there are a million other definitions, but I’ve never heard one that cut to the heart of the matter, and was instantly recognizable as fundamental. This definition, however, demands more discussion than can be put on a bumper sticker.
A lot of folks will try to tell you that X is a value, but Y is not. Baloney. It depends on the person doing the valuing! That’s the first real shocker here: without rational beings thinking and acting on their own volition, there are no values, because there’s no one to value anything. Without people desiring money, it could not be a value. Without people to desire life, it could not be a value. So, first of all, we are not talking about something that exists as an isolated concrete.
Anything can be a value. Socialists always sneer at money, because, knowing nothing about money, they think it is the only thing of value. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve said something about, “my values,” and been attacked for saying money is the most important thing in the world. They honestly believe that “value,” like “Yankee,” is half a word; they think the whole thing is “monetaryvalue.” Anyone who admits to valuing money in the presence of a socialist had better either have his foot in the stirrup or his holster unsnapped.
I’ve also had people say, “I’m not religious, so values aren’t important to me,” or, “I don’t have a family, so I don’t have any values.” How tragic that the Left has been so successful in perverting and twisting such a crucial subject.
A person can be a value. A ball, a book, a model airplane, freedom, a friend, a dog, a house, a car, money, righteousness, family, relationships…. All of these are things that person might act to gain or to keep, so all can be values. Note, I did not say, “…all ARE values!” To say that something IS a value is to imply that it is of value, purely in and of itself, without respect to a human being who is willing to act to gain or to keep it. Now it’s perfectly legitimate to say, ‘That IS one of my values,” because you are a human being, and you are simply stating a fact of your consciousness.
We are individuals, each having his own mind and consciousness, and therefore, each having his own values. Values are things of the mind. “Value” exists only in the mind, and as such, they are intensely personal and individual. It’s possible for a group of people to share values, but it is not possible for the group, itself, to have values, because the group is only a collection of individuals. This is true whether you believe you evolved into what you are, or that you were created by God.
Some folks say, “Oh, he doesn’t have any values, at all.” Baloney. Everybody has values. Some people value things like their children, their freedom, their independence, etc., and other people value things like staying stoned, being stimulated by pornography, or having power over their neighbors. The desirability of something depends on the standard of moral value by which you judge good and bad. Just as you need a standard of value called a ruler to measure the length of something, you need a standard to measure the value of something. If your life as a human being – rational, independent, free, loving, creative, etc – is your greatest value, you will also value things that support that fundamental value. Your life, then becomes your standard of value.
On the other hand, if staying stoned is your greatest value, you will also value things that support that value. Staying stoned becomes the standard by which you measure good or bad, desirable or not desirable.
One of the greatest and most contemptible mockeries of values is the term, “family values. Does it mean things that contribute to a strong and happy family? Does it mean things that guarantee a lot of babies that can be sold on the world market? Does it mean a lot of daughters so the patriarch can have plenty of slaves? I can guarantee there are interpretations of the term “family values” that would gag a buzzard off a gut wagon!
So if anything can be a value, are there good and bad values? Your durned right! To be precise, there are good and bad standards of value. There is only one legitimate, absolutely fundamental standard of value: life, and specifically, life as a human being. Without this, there can be no values, at all; the entire subject could never come up if we were all dead. Life as a human being is the only truly fundamental standard of moral value.
Fundamental. There’s a term you don’t hear very often. It means there’s nothing greater than that one, fundamental thing. When you have a decision, you refer to your standard of moral value. Does course X or course Y support or promote your standard of value? If your standard of moral value is being popular, you will make your decision based on which will make you most popular. But suppose there’s a decision that transcends popularity – perhaps the welfare of a loved one. Your standard of moral value won’t help you answer that question because the matter has nothing to do with popularity.
We must temporarily play “lifeboat,” though I must caution against basing your values on lifeboat ethics. The world is not a lifeboat, ie not every decision must be based on whether you or the other guy dies. As an exercise, though, it can be very instructive to think about decisions in terms of promoting or protecting your life. Deciding if you are going to have the appetizer portion or the whole enchilada will not require you to ask which will contribute most to your life. You pick the one you like most, or feel most in the mood for, and that’s that. But never forget that, ultimately all decisions can be traced to your standard of value. Another way to think about it is that all decisions can be, if you want to work at it, reduced to the lowest common denominator, like a fraction.
(If you look at the things promoted and supported by statists, and think about the standard of value upon which they are based, you can see the “lifeboat ethics” implicit in their values. With them, everything is a matter of somebody dying if we don’t pass this tax law, or that bail out package. They will never offer everyday solutions to things because their philosophy has nothing to do with life. They are anti-life. Being in a lifeboat and having to decide who you’re going to eat is not an everyday situation, so it makes a lousy thing to base your values on! That doesn’t keep liberals from doing it.)
There’s a mess of folks out there with really screwed up standards of value. That’s their right, according to the rational nature of Man, and you can’t morally interfere with it. But you sure don’t have to pal around with ‘em, or trust ‘em behind your back! People whose standard of value is to have power over other people are especially dangerous, which is why proficiency at and possession of arms is a very life-promoting value! (It’s also why all liberals and other statists are universally against our having guns – and against term limits!)
A human being must be free to exercise his rational faculty, from primary senses to the most abstract conceptualization. Out of the rational process will come values. A human being must be free to pursue his values. The pursuit of our own values is one of the greatest glories of humanity; it has produced all of our art, our science, and our happiness. It may not be strictly correct to say that Man is the rational animal, but he is most certainly the animal that lives by rationality; he is a goal-directed animal.
There is what seems to be a horrific contradiction in this: cannot an individual place zero value on rationality? Yes, and in that case, the things he values must always come from others. If he would eat, someone else must value him enough to take action to gain food for him. Someone else must provide, by their own rationality and free will, everything he needs to survive. He becomes a slave to others. It seems odd to think of a thief as a slave, but he is: he lives only so long as his victims have the things he values, so he can steal from them. Similarly, a liar is a slave to the person to whom he has lied, because if that person stops believing him, his crummy little game is up.
No human can live without the mind and the actions directed by it. If one chooses to not use his own mind, he will live as a parasite off those who use theirs. The free exercise of the human mind means the pursuit of goals, which means the pursuit of values. Some people value things that contribute to life, others value things that are harmful to life.
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