Soap and Education

APPLES AND MANZANOS - DIFFERENCES WHAT AIN'T

2012-02-09T10:21:00.000-08:00

From my oldest and dearest friend, on the false dichotomy of communism vs. fascism:

"...there has never been a pure capitalist country. Current evidence suggests that because of human nature, unfettered capitalism doesn't seem to work much better than communism (Atlas Shrugged talked about the problems with communism). We still need some form of government to keep the capitalist honest. Furthermore, the human race still hasn't dealt with the problem of religions that want to use some form of force to limit human freedom."

It is certainly true that there has never been a “pure capitalist country,” but the closer we’ve come to that ideal, the better off we’ve been. The poor in America have almost always been better off than the middle class in much of the world. Whereas, as nations have come closer to “pure commun-social-fasc-nazi-Rousseau-progressiv-ism,” the worse off they’ve become. There’s an old joke that, “The Constitution may not be perfect, but it’s better than whatever we’re using now.” Change “The Constitution.” to “capitalism,” and it fits the present issue perfectly.

Unfortunately, the media, academia, and the government (yes, before you say it, Bush was not spotless in this!) have so distorted the meaning of capitalism that I’d be amazed if one out of 10,000 Americans can give you a legitimate, non-contradictory definition.

Rand’s point was that we have been given a false dichotomy – a choice between apples and manzanos – and sold a despicable bill of goods that they are different – and that they are the only choices we have! How many times, Old Friend, have you and I gone around about the idea that we must choose between the tyranny of the Democrats and the tyranny of the Republicans? Or that one must either love Obama and hate Bush, or love Bush and hate Obama?

At this point, our Titanic of State is down 20 degrees by the head and half our boilers are flooded. This is not the time to be inventing an iceberg-detecting radar. Fortunately, we don’t have to invent a new form of government right now. We have one that works a hell of a lot better than what we are using. It may or may not be perfect; as you pointed out, we’ve never tried it in its pure form. We do, however, have considerable empirical evidence of its superiority over statism.

As for “…the problem of religions that want to use some form of force to limit human freedom,” we actually have dealt with that problem. It’s called a democratic republic, based on a written constitution, that is inviolable but amendable, and a heavily armed and informed population. Perhaps, “informed population” should be in bold uppercase at the head of the list.

Tyranny is tyranny. It doesn’t make a flippin’ bit of difference if the tyrant is Baptist or whatever the hell Obama is. Yes, some people do manipulate and pervert religious principles to justify infringing on the agency of others. But I’ve noticed a potfull of people who infringe on the agency of others, and don’t care a damn about justifying it by any means, at all! It’s sort of like the moral difference between the Confederacy and the Union.

The Confederates talked about the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and what they considered the original intent of the Constitution. They talked about freedom and rights and equality before the law. All of their high-sounding rhetoric was, of course, in hopeless – or insane – conflict with the practice of human slavery. The rest of the world saw it, and shook their heads in disbelief. Had the South been allowed to secede and try to make it in the world on its own, at some point that contradiction would have had to be addressed. They would have had absolutely no choice but to come down on the side of their noble principles, or on the side of their Peculiar Institution. Given the moral and economic pressure from the rest of the world, and the South’s near-obsession with the opinions of European governments, I think they’d have stuck to their principles and ended slavery. Of course, we’ll never know, because…

The North – or at least the Lincoln government and those who supported it – had thrown all of those high-sounding principles out. To hell with all that noble namby-pamby. We are here to bring all Americans under the iron heel of the Washington government – black, white, brown, male, and female. They weren’t the least bit concerned with ending racial slavery except as a means to the end of enslaving everybody.

I see a strong parallel in our situation today. On the one hand, we have people who profess to follow the teachings of a book that [ended up] saying slavery was wrong, that people had the right to make up their own minds, but not the right to escape the consequences of their actions. Some of these people range from squirrelly to flat out stupid, and scare me as much as or more than they scare you. But at least they have some connection to proper principles.

On the other hand, we have amoral pragmatists who wouldn’t know a moral principle if it bit ‘em on the leg. They are after the pure, raw power over their fellow man. It is, to quote Rand again, “Naked, smirking evil.”

For myself, I see an enormous difference between a Newt Gingrich saying he’s against forcibly taking money from people who are against abortions, then giving it to people who are for abortions, and Barack Obama saying he’s going to forcibly take money from whomever he damned well pleases and give to whomever he damned well pleases. Given the choices we have before us now, I choose to support someone who is at least aware of the existence of agency and moral principles. Of course, I’m going to watch ‘em like a hawk, and keep my gun hand clear.

Rebsarge

OF IDIOTS, TATERS, AND EVIL

2012-01-08T17:44:00.000-08:00

(Clear Disclosure. We’ll be using an acronym because “kind, omniscient, benevolent, omnipotent, just, and good government” is a bit windy. We’ll use kobojagg, instead.)

The legitimate transfer of wealth requires a transfer of goods or services. If you start the career of a nail when it leaves the foundry, you will see that every time it changes hands, someone makes money on it. If that isn’t impressive enough, you can follow its career before the foundry, and look at the iron ore, nickel, coke natural gas, and all the millions of commodities that went into making that silly little nail.

The Keynesians have never understood this. They do not believe that anything has any value other than what people arbitrarily place on it – what they are willing to pay for it. It is certainly true that in a statist economy with fiat currency, like most of the world has today, the value of money is entirely subjective. In their scheme, you could throw our little nail in the trash, and just have people giving each other money.

(The phrase, “Supply-side economics” is a tip of the hat to the Keynesian’s blind spot on the necessity of goods and services in an economy. It is so foreign to them that we have fallen into their linguistic trap of using “supply-side” to describe the alternative to… whatever the hell they advocate - “government-side,” or, “dictator-side,” or maybe just, “off side” economics. Like “trickle-down,” the phrase has become a pejorative used to describe principles that actually allow humans to survive. Operationally, both supply-side and trickle-down are aspects of a free, capitalist economy.)

In a Keynesian system, the government prints the money, and because it is a kobojagg, it assigns to the money a value that will allow everyone in the economy to survive. The kobojagg gives the money to its first-level bureaucrats. They keep what they need and give what’s left to the second-level bureaucrats. This process continues down the steam, with each person who handles the money keeping only what he needs.

The money goes back up the chain through taxation. Everyone has kept only what they need, but then the kobojagg says, “No, you don’t actually need quite that much,” and takes some of it back. When the kobojagg has collected taxes from everyone in the economy, the process starts over; they give the money to the first-level bureaucrats, and it trickles down from there. Note that the last guy in the chain is getting some pretty watery soup, and he’s not going to be happy about having to give some it back. So he raises a stink about it, and the government, being a kobojagg, says, “Okay. Here’s a progressive tax schedule, so that you don’t have to give as much back as the guys upstream from you.”

Now the guy on the bottom is happy, or at least, less unhappy. But the guys at the top are now thinking, “I’m going to have give back more than I used to, so I’m going to cook the books a little bit, and claim that I need more in order to cover the higher taxes.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to play that game. So at every level, everyone who handles the money keeps a little more than before, and by the time the bucket gets to the last guy, it’s down to seeds and stems again. (Yes, I survived 1968.) Since more and more of the money is skimmed off, the government says, “Well, okay. We’ll just print some more.”

Now, even in a Keynesian world, folks have to eat, and not everyone can look really good naked, so we need to look at the production of stuff for folks to eat and wear. Let’s start with a tater. A farmer has some good ground, so he plants taters. He has to eat until the taters can be marketed, but that’s okay because the kobojagg will give him money. After all, it’s just paper, right? Paper to which we stupid, non-degreed commoners are foolish enough to ascribe value.

So the taters come up, and Mr. Farmer takes them to town. He got a dollar a pound for last year’s crop, but this year, Mrs. Farmer has blessed him with another baby. His acreage hasn’t increased, so in order to feed the little varmint, he’s going to have to charge a buck and a dime a pound. Everybody at the market pitches a fit, but because Mr. Farmer pushes the plow without benefit of livestock, and has muscles in places where most people don’t even have places, they give in and pay him.

Guess what happens now? The people in the village, though full of taters, raise a stink to the kobojagg, demanding more money be passed down. The kobojagg now has a choice. It can print more money, or it can send out enough men to whip Mr. Farmer into lowering his prices. It’s a lose-lose situation, because even if they get the evil, one-percenter Farmer to lower his prices, he’s now going to demand more from the kobojagg in order to feed the fruit of his loins. (That's the first time I've used that term in an essay. It may not happen again.)

Has this process gotten incredibly long-winded and cumbersome? What is it going to look like when you add to the taters every, single thing that is produced in the economy, and add to Mr. Farmer every other citizen? And, sure as the world, some sorry sucker near the top of the stream is going to go bad and actually take all the money he WANTS, and what’s that going to do? And if that isn’t mind-boggling enough, let’s throw in a war, or a terrible hurricane season.

The bottom line is that John Maynard Keynes was an idiot, but not necessarily an evil man. All he did was have a stupid idea. However, everyone who presently subscribes to his stupid idea is evil because they have 80 years or so of proof that it really is a stupid idea. People who do stupid things once are just human. People who do them a second time are fools. People who point guns at others and force them to do stupid things are evil. This last group is very heavily represented in the American government, with no regard to party affiliation.

PS – as an afterthought, I should mention that the only way to get otherwise intelligent, moral people to go along with this kind of stupidity is if the kobojagg has a monopoly on gun ownership.

CORNBREAD AND RED BEANS - FIT FOR GODS AND HILLBILLIES

2011-12-17T19:09:00.000-08:00

When I was about 12 or 13, we very nearly went bankrupt. I didn’t know it at the time because Mom and Dad didn’t share that kind of stuff with a kid who couldn’t do anything about it, anyway. This was in the early 60’s, when bankruptcy was a shameful thing, and the folks were under tremendous strain. There was about 5 years when we ate a lot of beans! Now, we’d always eaten a fair amount of beans, so I didn’t consider it much of a change, and most certainly not a sacrifice! Mom’s red beans were the stuff of legend, and her cornbread was the stuff of mythology! (We always called pinto beans “red” beans. I didn’t know until I was well into my 20’s that most folks use the color adjective to refer to kidney beans.)

Like most kids, I guess – most boys, at least – I never thought about how to cook red beans and cornbread. We’d have beans for dinner three or four of times a week, and cornbread with them about half the time. On Sunday, our great treat was hamburger beans! I’ve no idea how Mom fixed it. It was hamburger meat mixed with the red beans. She wasn’t much into chile then, so they weren’t spicy, but they were oh! So tasty! It is my dream to figure out how she made that dish.

Since I’ve been on my own, I’ve messed around with making beans, and have found a number of things that don’t work very well. The last pot I made was outstanding, though, and I’ve been thinking about making another pot, if for no other reason than economy. Even eating cheap stuff at the cafeteria or local restaurants can run into money, but a few cents worth of red beans and salt pork will feed me for a week or more. Another reason for my interest in cooking is that I’m newly single, and there is a strong temptation to get lazy with my diet. I’ve never been a good cook, but my increasing waist size testifies that I haven’t been a total failure, either!

So, it was serendipitous that I picked up my cookbook while looking for something else, and out fell some papers. On one of them, written in Mom’s own hand, was her recipe for cornbread! Nostalgia crashed over me, and the memory of taking a bite of that wonderful stuff, covered with red beans and sopping in their juice, and wallering it around in my mouth transported me to a whole ‘nother time and place. .” I went right out and bought a cast iron skillet!

(For you Yankees, “waller” is the transitive form of the verb, “wallow,” and refers to rolling or wobbling something around. In this case, one would waller a mouthful of cornbread and red beans around with ones’ tongue in order to saturate all the sensory elements of the mouth with the flavors and textures. Other uses of the word include the way bearings can wear to the point that they cannot support the shaft that runs through them; they are then said to be, “wallered out.” And perhaps, given the climate of political correctness that infests our national dialogue today, I may be forgiven for using the half-word, “Yankees)

Here is Mom’s recipe for cornbread, verbatim.

Cornbread ??

1 heaping cup cornmeal
1 egg
1 cup milk – about
1 teaspoon baking powder – about
1½ teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons bacon grease

Mix dry ingredients. Add egg and enough milk so batter is smooth and easy to pour but not runny. Stir just enough to mix. Have grease very hot and add to ab***** [illegible] stir in good. Pour mix into very hot skillet and bake at 500 degrees about 20 minutes.

****************

So assuming I was supposed to add the very hot grease to the mixed ingredients, it went very well. I ended up with a little less than 3 tablespoons of bacon grease, but went with what I had. The mixture was pretty runny, so I added a little more cornmeal. My oven may be a little hotter than hers, so it was very fully done. About another minute and it would have been burnt. It came out about ½ inch thick, rather than the inch or more I remember her cornbread being, and it was a little dry. But, oh, my! The taste was familiar, like the face of a dear old friend that has been changed by the passage of years, but will always be familiar. It soaked up the bean juice in fine form, and I had a wonderful dinner!

Next time, which won’t be far off, I will double the recipe, use four tablespoons of bacon grease and a little less than one cup of milk per unit of meal. This may not be on the same level as “Julie and Julia,” but I bet I don’t starve!

THE VALUE OF COURAGE

2011-11-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

There has been much talk about not politicizing veterans today, and that is as it should be. So I’m going to challenge some paradigms. A Yankee soldier was asked why he was burying the remains of a Confederate who had died along a mountain trail in New Mexico. He shrugged and said, “They’re all some mother’s sons.”

I have met veterans of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht, of the Imperial Japanese Navy, and of the North Vietnamese army. (I’ve probably met a few more-or-less reconstructed VC, too, but they don’t put that information on their name tags!) I have found them all to be good men. Some will express bitterness or cynicism after a few beers, but that’s certainly no indictment. They answered their countries’ calls, and did their best. I don’t know what horrors they may have seen or even participated in, and I don’t feel a need to know.

Whatever flag they followed, there was a picture of a girl somewhere in their kits, and neither the shade of her skin nor the shape of her eyes made a spittin’ bit of difference. They shared with their American enemies a willingness to do the unspeakable, should be required of them. They put their necks on the blocks. That the axe didn’t fall on them is not the least bit relevant to the value of that quality. If we honor courage – as we should – does it matter if the courage were cloaked in feldegrau, or that awful mustardy-yellow instead of khaki or forest green? I think it does not.

There’s little enough of that quality in evidence today - and though the United States is more than richly blessed with so much of it - I do not believe the human tribe can afford to belittle or ignore that which has blessed other nations.

In fact, there is an old Sioux proverb that says, “The greatness of a man may be seen in the greatness of his enemies.” If our soldiers are brave, and their victories great, we can not say that those they strove against were low, or mean, or trivial.

If you know someone who served his or her nation, let them know you value their commitment and courage, and that you are pleased to call them countrymen.

(As I finished this, it dawned on me that I forget that the internet is an international forum, and that my American hubris may not be all that palatable to some. I will not apologize or ask pardon, but say that the story of your lands is up to you to tell, and when you tell it, I will listen. The story of my own land is so far beyond my capacity to tell that I would be foolish, indeed to tackle yours, too.)

WHEN A DEFINITION IS MORE MIRROR THAN WINDOW

2011-11-01T21:50:00.000-07:00

All my life, I’ve heard people say, “Life [or the world] isn’t fair.” It’s generally preceded or followed by some variation on, “Quit whining.” The fairness of life or the world has always puzzled me; why isn’t it fair? Or is it fair? And what in blazes does “fair” mean, anyway. With the recent (high summer of 2011) crusade against Wall Street, capitalism, private property, and wealth of any sort save that which is distributed by the government, “fair” has become a battle cry. All the protesters want, they say, is fairness – a fair shake – a fair share.
The most common answer to their battle cry has been the old bromide that life isn’t fair, so quit whining and go back to class. Still, no one that I have heard has addressed the definition of fair, its operative principles, its moral relevance, or even the possibility that it doesn’t exist.

Reckon that leaves it up to me.

Let’s start with some dictionary definitions. I will focus on definitions of the word that relate to the subject of life’s fairness. I will not address other usage, such as a county fair, a fair wind, fair game, fair ball, fair hair, etc..

First, Dictionary.com:
1. free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice: a fair decision; a fair judge.
2. legitimately sought, pursued, done, given, etc.; proper under the rules: a fair
fight.

Now from Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary:
6 . a : marked by impartiality and honesty: free from self-interest, prejudice, or
favoritism fair person to do business with> b (1) : conforming with the
established rules : allowed (2) : consonant with merit or importance : due
fair share>

…and the Macmillan online dictionary, which seems to think that using a word in a sentence constitutes a definition:
1. If a situation is fair, everyone is treated equally and in a reasonable way.
2. Reasonable and morally right.

Finally, the Oxford English Dictionary online:
1. …in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate…
A. Just or appropriate under the circumstances.
B. As an adverb - without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage

Look at this crap! No wonder American kids don’t know fair from a road apple. Every one of these dictionaries has some subjective slant or assumption of moral judgment. There are two cardinal rules of definition: (1) You can’t use a word to define itself; that is the fallacy of tautology. It is not epistemologically valid to say, “Fair is just. And what is just? Just is fair. And what is fair…?” It goes on and on, but never says anything. Just like most professors. (2) You can’t use high-level abstractions to define other high-level abstractions. Consider this example using algebra. The statement, X = Y may be true, but if you expect anyone to be able to use your equation, you have to make it known that Y = 4A + 5C + D. In the original statement, both X and Y are abstractions, so saying they are equal is meaningless unless Y is defined in detail. Look at how all of these dictionaries used these two fallacies with abandon.

DICTIONARY.COM
Item 1 from Dictionary.com uses two huge abstractions, “dishonesty” and, “injustice” to define another abstraction. To use this definition, one would have to look up those words, too. I didn’t do that, but I’d be surprised if they weren’t defined as,“fair.” Item 2 from this dictionary uses another very high-level abstraction, “legitimately.” In the debate between the Occupy Wall Street crowd and a businessman, I bet both would consider themselves “legitimate,” but would have grossly different definitions of the word.

The last clause in the Dictionary.com definition is not too bad: “proper under the rules.” “Proper” in this sense clearly means “according to” the rules, and the concept of “rules” is pretty concrete. Rules are set beforehand, hopefully written, and, though they may vary per the situation, for any situation, it is possible to know them with certainty.

MERRIAM-WEBSTER
The Merriam-Webster definition wasn’t too awful until I got to that “…free from self-interest,” phrase. This is a classic progressive/statist equivocation. To cut this short, if one is in any sport or endeavor, is it not in the “self-interest” of all for the rules to be enforced uniformly, or impartially, to use their own word? The idea that self-interest precludes honesty, fairness, or justice is a despicable false dichotomy. It is used to justify such monstrosities as vast government bureaucracies staffed by automatons who have no interest or stake in any decision, and are thereby incapable of making rational, useful decisions. It is a hopelessly contradictory, and as such, false. Maybe even evil.

Part B of the M-W definition is actually pretty clear-cut: “conforming with the established rules; allowed.” It says, explicitly, that the rules are established antecedently, and implicitly that all parties at least have access to them.

Part 2 of that definition is absolutely stunning! It says, “consonant with merit or performance; due.” This is the only reference in these four dictionaries to the concept of “earning” something, or that something earned by a person is “due” that person. They almost slipped this one past me! I didn’t catch it until I’d read over the definition several times, and then it stopped me cold. “Merit” is a bit of an abstraction, and some may argue whether merit is inborn or intrinsic, or is related to volition and action, but used in conjunction with “performance,” it implies the latter; some performance may have more merit that other performance. Stunning! This will come up again!

MACMILLAN
The Macmillan definition is contemptible and utterly worthless – nay, destructive – destructive because it may lead some poor student into thinking he is actually better-informed or –educated after having read it. First, using a word in a sentence is not a definition. Second, “…everyone is treated equally,” contains an explicit acceptance of equalitarianism, which flies squarely in the face of Merriam-Webster’s “merit or performance.” Not all people will perform equally, so does being “…treated equally,” mean they all get the same result, regardless of performance, or does it mean that they are all judged by the same standard, and those who come up short… well…come up short? And “reasonable?” Give me a break! How many definitions of that word can you find on any given street corner?
Their second definition, “Reasonable and morally right,” is just as bad, if not worse. These are two of the greatest, most hotly-debated abstractions in the realm of human politics! They could as well have said, “Whatever Wiley E. Coyote likes.” It is difficult for me to suppress my loathing and contempt for the oatmeal-minded, professional idiot who penned this preposterous excuse for a definition.

OXFORD DICTIONARY
Oh, how I have loved my Oxford Universal Dictionary of the English Language! All umpteen pounds of it! Published in 1957, it has been my standard of value for meaning and usage since I bought it at a yard sale for 50 cents.

The first part of their definition makes the same assertion as part B of Merriam-Webster’s entry: that rules may exist, and what is in accordance with them is “fair.” It also uses one of the greatest bugaboos in all liberaldom: “standards!” Rules are not the same as standards; both words refer to concretes, which makes them very solid for using in a definition. Then Oxford let me down; they threw in “legitimate.” Dang it! “Legitimate” is as great an abstraction as “reasonable,” or “morally right.”

The second part of the Oxford dictionary falls apart. “Just or appropriate” are debatable under any circumstances, and as such are not admissible evidence in the court of definition. It is interesting that Oxford implies that what is fair under one set of circumstances may not be under another, but they didn’t develop this crucial aspect of fairness. A shame.

Finally, their definition of fair as an adverb is not bad except for the reference to “unjust.” What is “unjust” Well, it’s not “fair.” And so on and on around the spinney until the woozle bites us on the butt!

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
There may be decent dictionaries online, but I haven’t found one. If a 5th grader were to try to make sense out of the OWS howling about fairness, and went to these online sources, the poor kid would be so screwed up it would take a year on an island with a stack of Pogo comics to straighten him out.

It is my intention to examine as many different components of fairness as possible and come up with a usable, reality based, rational definition that does not include floating abstractions or tautology, and does not beg questions, but is concise and comprehensible.

It may take me down the rabbit hole, around the spinney, and where no man has gone before, but I’m gonna give it a shot.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

As often as language is a product of its culture, so the reverse is also true. Words determine the organization of concepts in our minds, and the relationships between those concepts. If words were tinker toys, how many different connections could you make?

A word like “fair” has been used so much, for so many different things, that one might be tempted to shake one’s head and say, “It ain’t worth the trouble.” But I take a different cut at it; because the word has been used so much, it must be either very important or very handy, and either way it’s worth some time.

Very often, “fair” seems to be closely associated with justice, as either a synonym or a simile. Justice is a pretty broad abstraction, too, but has been much better treated in print than has fair. A distillation of several definitions of justice centers on one of two things: a law being fulfilled, or someone getting what he deserved. If someone breaks a law and is punished, that’s justice; he screwed up and got what he deserved. But emotionally, the two ideas are vastly different.

For one thing, the law and justice are not the same, and are rapidly diverging, though there are still occasions when we would say a punishment is fair because it suits the crime. More and more often, we find ourselves thinking that justice is done when a law is flaunted, or punishment deflected. For example, if someone were arrested for violating a bad law, but those who did the arresting came out on the short end, we’d say justice was done. In this case, fair and the dictates of the law are opposed.

Emotionally, we often associate fair more with mercy than with justice. If justice is someone getting what he deserved – good or bad, and in the context of life, in general, rather than the law – then mercy is someone not getting what he deserved. In Albuquerque a month or so ago, a Mexican illegal alien risked his own safety to rescue a little girl from the hands of a molester. He was publicly praised and commended and pretty much pardoned for everything, and I think the vast majority of folks thought that was fair, and even just – though certainly not by the letter of the law.

At this point, scratching my head as I ponder the contradictions I’ve just written, it strikes me to back off and fire on this from a different angle. A strict, linguistically and epistemologically sound definition of fair shouldn’t be all that difficult to write. It’s the emotional connotations and loading of the word that get messy. In fact, the word has so much emotion attached to it that it may be impossible for many to read such a definition without throwing something at me.

How about this: “Fair – adjective – in accordance or compliance with the standards and/or the rules that apply to a situation at a given time, and in a given place.”

This acknowledges that standards – ie, what we think is right – and rules – ie, what someone has written down – are not necessarily the same. The reference to “… a situation…” acknowledges that the facts make a difference in what is fair. The reference to “… a given time, and in a given place,” acknowledges that standards of right and wrong change over time, and that different cultural groups will have different standards. What is fair in one century, or in one country, may not be fair at any other time or place.

The essence of this definition is that no matter what you are talking about, you can find some nut, somewhere, who thinks it’s fair. Does this invalidate the definition? No, it does not. In order for someone to think something is fair, it would have to be “…in accordance or compliance…” with that person’s standards. The fact that standards vary matters not a whit. “Fair” is what complies with our standards for that situation. If you understand a person’s standards, you can know what they will think is fair. Conversely, if you look at what they think is fair, you can pretty well see their standards.

Consider any adjective – let’s take “blue.” Skeptics and agnostics love to ask, “How do you know that the color you call blue is the same as the color I call blue?” They love to pretend this makes a rat’s hiney’s worth of difference to intelligent people, and will drop this polemic turd in the conversational punchbowl at the first opportunity.

The fact is that I DON’T know the color I call blue is the same one you call blue. That doesn’t mean that the color isn’t real, nor that my senses – or yours – are invalid. The fact of the matter is that the object we are looking at is a real object. It exists, and has the very specific and real surface characteristic as to reflect light of the frequency that we both call blue.. That’s all that matters. It’s real. Our senses are real. When I say blue, you know what I mean, and whether we are both experiencing the same sensory response doesn’t make a flippin’ bit of difference.

The same is true of definitions of subjective concepts like fair. The definition must include the fact of subjectivity. That doesn’t invalidate the definition; it makes it real.
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“Fair – adjective – in accordance or compliance with the standards and/or the rules that apply to a situation at a given time, and in a given place.”

A definition must avoid tautology, or using a word to define itself. Synonyms are fine, but they are not definitions because they, in turn, must be defined. A definition must not use unfounded or ungrounded abstractions because, like tautologies, they must be defined before they may be useful. When defining a concept as broad as “fair,” that is used in such radically different ways, a definition must be broad enough to include all genuses (or genera), and specific enough to differentiate the concept from all others. The dictionaries I quoted went wrong because they didn’t understand these basic principles.

The definition I have tendered of “fair” posits that no matter how the word is used, it indicates compliance or adherence with some standard or rule. The standard can be anything, and in the case of fair, is quite likely to be! But this is a fact: whoever uses the word is saying that the subject complies with his standards, whatever they may be. My definition also allows for the fact that a thing may be considered fair at one time, or in one place, but not in another, again without pinning it to any one standard.

Standards will vary, but that fair refers to them is not the least bit subjective or situational. Whenever I hear a politician say, “I will do what is fair [or right],” I start looking for the door. Look around. No matter which side of this sorry rodeo you are on, it is plain that folks’ definitions of fair vary hysterically!

The fact that standards are subjective does not in any way invalidate the definition of fair, nor delegitimize the use of the word. In a delicious bit of irony, it tells us more about the speaker than about the subject. If someone says stoning little girls for looking at little boys is fair, we learn nothing whatsoever about stoning. But we learn much about the speaker – whether we agree with him or not! It is interesting to me, geek that I am, how a word properly defined and understood is more useful in understanding the person using it than for understanding the subject.

When people talk about the rich, “…paying their fair share,” one must ask, “According to what standard?” How much is fair in this case? Bill Gates certainly qualifies as rich. He got his money by developing and managing an organization that provides products that have changed the course of the human race for the rest of ever. Did Bill earn that wealth of his? I say he did. He earned it in ways that those who disparage him are incapable of grasping. So if fair has to do with getting what you’ve earned, who is qualified to say Bill earned so much, but no more? The instant someone says, “Fair share,” they are saying that a fair share can be defined, that someone can define it, and that they are the ones to do it. I hear someone whining, “Wellll, they didn’t say THEY were the ones to do it.” Give me a friggin’ break! Do you think they’re gonna let Bill decide?

I am not comfortable walking unarmed among such people.

Anytime you hear someone say that such and so is “only fair,” understand that they have not defined the fairness of whatever it is. They have shown you, as if on a giant billboard, what they hold dear, what their ethics are, and what they would do to you if they had a chance.

There are other such words. “Radical” is one. When anyone condemns you for being “radical,” what he’s really saying is that he doesn’t agree with your position, but darned if he can figure out why, so he’s just going to attack you. Think about it. Has anyone every said, “You are 100% right, you radical SOB?”

Another is, “Narrow-minded.” The same rule applies to this as to radical. We should all strive to frequently hear such words thrown at us by those who are intellectually incapable of holding us a light. (From one of my mom’s Panhandle expressions. It means they aren’t fit to hold the lantern that illuminates your work.)

Use the rules of definition to analyze what people say. It may not tell you much about the subject of which they speak, but it can tell you volumes about them, and ultimately, that’s probably more valuable.

VARIATION ON BASTIAT'S "WHAT YOU SEE..."

2011-10-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

When the government controls businesses, it also controls, by proxy, all those people who supply goods or services to those businesses, as well as those who patronize that business. When the government tells Walmart they can’t build a store in a town because it would drive the mom and pop stores under, the government is also limiting the freedom – ie, control of private property – of: the truckers who would haul goods to that store, the people who would be employed by that store, the people who would patronize that store, the people who would build that store, and the people who would provide goods and services to the truckers, employees, construction workers associated with that store.

There is another element of this that is UNIVERSALLY ignored by both the Left and the Right: If the premise is that Walmart must be prevented from undercutting their prices of the little stores and thereby breaking them, then IT IS AXIOMATIC that the people of the community will be forced by their government to pay artificially inflated prices for goods and services. The employees who might have left the little stores for the higher wages and better benefits of Walmart will be forced to endure a lower standard of living than they would otherwise have. The money that shoppers might have saved, and the wages the workers might have earned will NOT be available to support new businesses in the community, new technology that might enrich the lives of the human race, or charities that might have sustained and succored the needy.

Thus, the little stores have been saved, but at what cost? The cost is the freedom of everyone associated with that community or that Walmart. How many new businesses will be denied existence? How many young people will be denied the opportunity to start their own businesses? Yes, it is sad to see the little stores with which we grew up go under, but that is life. Yes, life. Everything dies. Even Walmart will die. Under a free, ie, capitalistic market, the people decide what businesses live and die. Under statism, the government decides. Either way, businesses will fail.

But under a statist government, freedom fails, too.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ABOLITION AND WAR BETWEEN THE STATES

2011-10-01T16:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not trying to justify the South or slavery. It just aggravates the snot out of me to hear the old Republican party held up as saints of liberation and justice. Barack Obama would have fit in just fine.

Andrew Johnson was a Southerner who loved the South. He wasn't an abolitionist, but he hated the wealthy, powerful planters and career politicians. He believed the radical, hard line they had taken had caused the war. For all that, though, Johnson was not even in the same league with Thaddeus Stevens, et al, who were driven by hatred of everything Southern, and more so by anything that challenged federal power.

It would not be right to say that all Republicans lusted for power, and through carelessness, I pretty much did say that. Sorry. But there was a powerful, radical core in the Republican party, and they caused no end of mischief. The Radicals in Congress were determined to keep them out of public service, especially positions of power. Contrary to popular mythology, the KKK was not initially the terrorist group it became, and Nathan Bedford Forrest did not start it. Forrest was contacted by the founders of the Klan and asked to rep for them. As the Klan was explained to Forrest, it was to be sort of a fraternal organization of former Confederate officers, dedicated to helping each other find work and adjust to living among the corpses of their dreams. (Whatever one might think of Southern politics, those men put everything they had, and then some, into the cause.) Forrest thought that was a good idea and agreed to be the public face of the Klan. The organization very quickly turned ugly, and Forrest not only disassociated himself from it, he wrote to his Congressional delegation and suggested that the Klan be outlawed. The treatment Forrest has received from modern academians, liberals, and the NNACP is utterly shameful.

The War Between the States was not a civil war. A civil war is a war between factions within a nation for control of that nation. Southerners did not want to control the nation. They wanted nothing to do with the United States, most especially its government. They said, “You folks go on and do what you want, but we’re going to strike out on our own.” It was a war of independence, every bit as much as the one in 1775. Many Southerners were surprised when Lincoln mustered an army and sent it south; much as they despised him, they didn’t believe even he could be that crazy.

Here is the critical point: The South did not threaten the Federal government. It did not try to alter it or hinder it in any way, save to deny its control over the South. The war waged by the North was not to protect the federal government. It was a war for one purpose, and one purpose, only: to make sure those damned white trash down there never tried to do anything on their own again. In that, it succeeded. Maybe.

Lincoln was no lover of Blacks. Apparently he hated slavery, but not because it degraded the slaves. He hated slavery because association with Blacks, even as masters to slaves, was corrosive to the character of the White race. He was not an abolitionist to any degree, at all. Shortly before the war, he said that his objective was to preserve the Union, and if he had to destroy slavery to do it, he would, but if he had to preserve slavery to do it, he’d do that, too. The Emancipation Proclamation is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on the American people by professors – and that’s going some!

There was a preliminary proclamation issued in Sept. of ’62, right after Antietam. That proclamation differed subtly but significantly from the final one issued in January of ’63. The preliminary proclamation urged Slaves to take whatever means necessary to secure their freedom, and said that the US government would protect them and help them if possible. Lincoln, who possessed an almost supernatural grasp of human nature, knew that Southerners would interpret that to mean that the US government was encouraging and edifying slave revolt and the murder of Whites (which, in fact, it was). They remembered Nat Turner’s Rebellion, and the very thought of what Lincoln was suggesting made the mildest Southerner a diehard radical. The entire South rejected the Proclamation vehemently, and it was during that reaction that the Confederate Congress issued the infamous extermination notice – that any former slave caught in US uniform, or serving the US army in any way would be executed. (The movie “Glory” mentioned this.)

So Lincoln deliberately wrote the preliminary Proclamation in such a way as to infuriate the South and solidify its resolve to fight to the death. In private, Lincoln and his cabinet assured the Congress and Northern governors that the Proclamation was just a political ploy to make it appear that the war was over slavery. If France or England were to come in on the side of the South, they’d have to deal with being called pro-slavery by the rest of the world. When the final Proclamation was issued, it caused havoc in the North. Vermont debated secession. The entire 15th Corps, one of the finest in the Army of the Tennessee, broke camp and headed back to Illinois, saying, “We’ll be damned if we’ll die for the Niggers.” Only the charisma of Black Jack Logan kept them in the order of battle. There were race riots and large-scale lynchings of Blacks in Detroit, New York, and even Washington, DC. Northern editors excoriated Lincoln for murdering good White people for the sake of Blacks.

Lincoln’s ploy for international opinion worked. The preliminary Proclamation was never published abroad, so it appeared that Southern rage was associated with the final one, which was more reasonable. Lincoln stood there, with his palms up, shrugging his shoulders, and saying, “See what I have to deal with? These hillbillies are really terrible people.” England and France breathed a sigh of relief because they could posture on the “moral high ground,” and stay out of the war. Privately, their governments had been horrified at the casualties being taken by both sides, and had no desire to feed their men into such slaughter.

The radical abolitionist faction notwithstanding, there is no way any reasonable person could conclude that the War Between the States was fought to end slavery – not by the politicians, and certainly not by the vast majority of men who fought in it. Of course, the NAACP and other organizations like them should never be mentioned in the same breath with the word – (breathe in, breathe out) “reasonable.”

If further evidence is needed that the war was fought for the subjugation of the Southern people, consider what happened following the war. Secessionist states were not allowed to be readmitted to the Union or have seats in Congress until they ratified the 13th Amendment. If the North had been fighting for abolition, wouldn’t one think that perhaps Washington, DC, might have outlawed slavery BEFORE the 13th Amendment? In fact, mightn’t they have passed the amendment at the outset, since they did it without participation or consent of the South, anyway? Mightn’t the Emancipation Proclamation have freed slaves in areas controlled by the Washington government, rather than saying, EXPLICITLY, that if the South would cease its rebellion and send representatives back to Washington, they COULD KEEP THEIR SLAVES? The Proclamation did NOT declare slaves free! Oh, hell no! It defined the conditions under which slave owners could keep their “property!”

The US government killed a couple hundred thousand Southern men, destroyed millions of acres of farmland, burned out tens of thousands of families and businesses, wrecked ports and railroads, then sent Black troops into the South to enforce the eviction of Southerners from farms and plantations that had been in their families for generations – even centuries – with no regard to whether or not those families had owned slaves. Those properties were then broken up and given to former slaves, and, in some cases, free Blacks. At the same time, the KKK actually grew faster in states like Illinois and Pennsylvania than in Georgia because all those former slaves headed north like a plague of locusts – filthy, ignorant, and unskilled. No, it was most emphatically not their fault, but the fact is they didn’t make very good neighbors, and all those pious damnyankees didn’t want ‘em anywhere near.

(In the early 1960’s, Dick Gregory, who later used his brain for a tether ball, said, “In the north, they don’t care how big I get, as long as I don’t get too close. In the south, they don’t care how close I get, as long as I don’t get to big.”)

Then, after crushing the South militarily, seizing their governments and institutions, putting armed troops – and Black troops, at that - in their streets, the Federal government passed the 13th Amendment. Passed it without the participation or consent of Southern delegates, as if the secessionist states were not part of the Union. Thus, the federal government, led almost solely by Lincoln, prosecuted a war that slew 600,000 Americans, under the premise that the South was still part of the Union, and the uprising was criminal, not diplomatic – and after all that, passed a nation-changing measure without the participation of those who had supposedly never left the Union. And then, while holding the Southern people by the throat and at the points of bayonets, the Southern people were told that, if they ever wanted to be permitted to kiss the boots of the tyrants they’d given 200,000 lives to be rid of, they had to accept the 13th Amendment. The hypocrisy is beyond staggering!

So. Yes. I think Abraham Lincoln is the greatest mass murderer in American history. I think the Federal government waged a war of subjugation against the South, and I think the 13th Amendment was passed without the consent of people who were forced, at gunpoint, to ratify it.

Lest I be accused of defending pro-slavery Democrats, I should say that, in my opinion, they deserved everything they got - a taste of being helpless and hopeless. It's a shame they couldn't have had a little taste of being owned! I just hate to see people twist history to make Lincoln, et al look like friggin' saints.

I have heard Northerners express variations on, "Why can't you damned inbred hillbillies accept the fact that we kicked your asses, and shut up and accept it?" I tell them, "Well, I think you just answered your own question." I was at a trade show in Boston, and at the kick-off luncheon, was sitting with several people from that area. One lady commented on my accent and asked if I were from the south I said, "Yes, Ma'am, I'm from Texas."

Without missing a beat, she said, "Are you in the Klan?" I said, "No. Are you?" She threw her napkin at me and left the table. Not one of the yankees (pardon my use of half-words) said another word to me, or about the incident.

Neither I not any other Southerner I know are looking for reparations or apologies. We're just looking for the truth. For example, movies have been made about Andersonville, and I've been accused of approving what happened there. Whenever anyone talks about the moral reasoning of the two sides, Andersonville comes up pretty quick. But consider this comparison: Andersonville was open less than a year, and right at 3000 men died there. The commandant was hanged, and to this day, the entire Southern people are scourged for it. The federal prison at Elmira, NY, was open for a little over 6 months, and right at 3000 men died there. The commandant was given a medal and promotion, and not one American out of 10,000 ever heard of Hellmira.

RIGHT TO WORK VS. PUBLIC OBSCENITY

2011-08-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

There was an article under the heading of "Political Intelligence" at Boston.com, about a businessman who is campaigning for a so-called "right to work" bill. Here's the link: http://www.boston.com/Boston/politicalintelligence/2011/08/union-protests-company-owner-who-backs-right-work-bill/L2nrR9evkjGaptw1b1sCsM/index.html

and here's my response:

First, only two of the union leaders' statements were published, and one of them was, "...there’s going to be a price to pay for that,” said Kurt Ehrenberg,..." I would interpret that as a threat of something more than peaceful protests. There is also a reference to the incident when 300 unionists (to use a 19th century term) swamped a Legislative hearing last year. Contemporary reports of that incident described it as very nearly violent, and most emphatically intimidating.

Now this is a bit more abstract: As the law reads right now, the unions can not force people to join them, but they CAN force people to pay dues, whether or not they are members of the union. In my opinion, any defense of such a practice, no matter how eloquent or civil, is obscene and should be punishable by imprisonment, at least.

Consider this - which I do not mean to be a definitive argument, but merely an example: Telling people what they can eat, what they do with their spare time, or what kind of art they may hang in their homes would violate any number of articles of the Constitution, not to mention basic laws of human decency. So the union is allowed to tell people, "You know that 20 bucks a month you were going to use to take your wife to dinner, or put in your vacation fund, or decorate your home? Well, screw you. Give it to us."

Now consider this: what if it weren't a government-sanctified union, but a street thug, demanding dane geld? I believe a citizen would be justified in setting the law on that thug, and if it turned out the law were in collusion with the thug, I believe a bit of gun play would be fully justified.

In this particular case, while the immediate behavior of the union HINTED at thuggery, their moral principles are, as they say, "in the tank" for thuggery.

MY QUEST FOR CIVILITY

2011-08-02T22:52:00.000-07:00

Set humor and sarcasm to "off." I struggle with this every day. When I got out of the Marines, I'd been so brutalized BY Blacks for 4 years that I was filled with hatred - a real candidate for the KKK. A string of miracles (that I used to call "coincidence") pulled me back from the edge of that pit. When I was finally able to get some distance from myself and see what I had almost become, it filled me with shame and regret. I never became what you'd call a pacifist, or anything close to that, but for the past 35 years or so, I have worked very, very hard at rooting out and exorcising the racism and hatred from my thinking and my character.

As the old saying goes, "God knows I'm not what I should be, but I thank God I'm not what I used to be."

In about the last 4 or 5 years, though, that old devil has regained a lot of lost ground. The Scriptures tell us that, "...there must needs be opposition in all things." If there is a love that transfigures and saves a man's soul, mustn't there also be the polar opposite of that love? I think this is one of the greatest tasks Heavenly Father has set us: to practice the one extreme while denying the other. For much of my life, this challenge has been beyond my ability - and vastly beyond my faith!

So I find myself in the position of having found an earthly love that is the greatest I've ever known. It has, literally, transfigured me and brought me to my knees in supplication that I might be worthy of the smallest part of it. The love of which I speak is what I feel for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. (For those about to castigate me for calling them mine when they aren't - you're right. They are my step-children and grandchildren. But if you who bite from behind at the sinews of my heart had the faintest notion of the love that drives me, you might close your serpent's mouths, and wonder.)

The great love that has moved me so far demands that I do all I can to leave these precious ones a legacy - an inheritance - of the the best I have - the firstlings of my life, as it were. I have no money or worldly wealth to leave them. I have only honor and liberty. If they have these, they will find their own way to those other virtues: forbearance, charity, gratitude, humility, and all of those other traits that prove Mankind to be the child of our Father.

What do I see now? I see that honor attacked and ridiculed on all sides. I see that liberty thrown down and trampled under the feet of entities not worthy of the phlegm of those who gave it birth - who sewed the stripes of its banner with their muscle and bone, and dyed it with their blood. I see the liberty that ought to be guaranteed to my precious ones defiled and perverted with a wanton maliciousness that would make the demons of the pit hang their heads in shame. I see the future of my children squandered for cheap, ephemeral political glory and power.

I see the sacrifices of generations of men and women who shed oceans of sweat and blood to secure the liberty decreed by My Father in Heaven as the birthright of His children. And I see those sacrifices, not just disagreed with - not just pushed out of style - but kicked through the sewers of the vilest imaginations of the human mind.

Then the emotions that swamp this old scrapper's heart turn hard and hot, and I say things that I know are wrong, and think things that have no place in a Christian mind. I fight these things at the same time I'm fighting what gives them rise. Some days are better than others.

I ask you, though, my dear and gentle friends: do not think me so low and savage that I would feel these things because of a disagreement, or a difference of opinion.

TRICKLE DOWN

2011-08-01T22:47:00.000-07:00

A comparison: Secenario 1 - the government takes money from them that has it and gives it to them that don't. Them that has just gotten it spends it on... whatever, and then they don't have it no more. Them to whom it was spent has it now, so they spends it on... whatever. So on and on.

In this scenario, the money was placed in the hands of a chosen elite, and from there, it distilled out across the economic society - or, dare I say, "trickled down."

Scenario 2 - the government lets them that made the money keep it. Some of it they spends on... whatever, then they don't have so much no more. Them to whom it was spent has it now, so they spends it on... whatever. And so on and on. Now, them that made the money didn't spend all they had 'cause they's so stinkin', flithy rich. So what does they do with the rest of it? They invests it. What does that mean? It means that the money is loaned to them that needs it to start new businesses or expand existing businesses, or buy houses, or take vacations, or send their babies to college, or... whatever. And, as in every case, them to whom the money was given spends it, and them to whom it was spent spends it... and so on and on.

In this scenario, the money was left in the hands of the organizers (or creators) of wealth, and from there, it distilled across the economic society - or, dare I say, "Trickled down."

In spite of the apparent equivalency of the bottom line, the two scenarios are vastly different. In the first, there is chattel slavery of anyone the government chooses to call "rich." In the second, there is liberty.

In the first, decisions on the seizure and redistribution of wealth are made by government flacks who are known, beyond any shadow of a doubt, to be stinkin' crooks. In the second, some distributions may also be made my corporate flacks who are stinkin' crooks, but some will be made by those who understand things like honor, courage, integrity, risk, desire, drive, and persistence.

And here is a difference that I have never read anywhere else: In the first scenario, graft is a recognized, institutionalized part of the culture, to be aided, edified, sucked-up to, and bartered for more of the same.

In the second scenario, graft is a crime, and is punishable to the extent that the people have the will to punish it.

NO FREE LUNCH - CAUSE AND EFFECT VS. THE WELFARE STATE

2011-06-26T21:48:00.000-07:00

One who is more dear to me than breath said she had left the church behind because it has too many rules that kept her from enjoying her life. I hear that from many people, young and old, and from all religious and philosophical backgrounds.

I say to my beloved and to all others that God has not given us rules. He has given us choices.

A rule is something that says, “You must do this, period.” A choice is something that says, “If you want this reward, you must fulfill that condition.”

Even in the atheistic universe, there are natural laws: gravity, thermodynamics, motion and energy, and, most relevant, identity. The law of identity is much despised by those who would love to convince us we don’t really exist, and it is therefore of no consequence that they take from us our possessions and our freedom. But the law of identity is immutable and inescapable, even for them. It says, simply, that everything is what it is, and that nothing can exist as something other than what it is.

If something exists, it must have some identity – features, characteristics, etc.. Otherwise, how would we be aware of it, in the first place? That’s not nearly as abstract as it sounds. If something did not have the characteristic of reflecting light, we could not see it. If it did not have characteristic of emitting molecules that stimulate our olfactory nerves, we could not smell it. If it did not have the characteristic of mass, we could not lift it.

If something exists, it must exist as something, which means it must have the characteristics that identify it as whatever that something is. If it had no characteristics, how would you know it was there, anyway?

There is a second part of the law of identity: nothing can exist as whatever it is and as something else in the same way and at the same time. I love it when nihilists smirk, “But what about something that is hot to me and cold to you?” and then rear back with their arms crossed as if they’d really said something intelligent. Here’s the answer: the definition says, “…in the same way…”. Your measurement of temperature and mine may be different; there is no violation of identity. Quote the contrary, the object has the very specific and measurable identity of, “That which, when perceived by the nihilist is hot, but when perceived by the Mormon is cold.” And that, friends and neighbors, is what I’d call a specific identity.

Or, the slightly better-educated nihilist loves to say, “Well…[that’s when you know you’ve got ‘em – their eyes flicker around and their voice changes pitch, and they whine…] Well, what about light? It is both a particle and a beam!”

Wrong again! If measured by method A, light has the characteristics of a particle, but when measured by method B, it appears to be a beam. In order for the nihilist position to be valid, it would have to appear simultaneously as both a particle and a beam when measured by method A, and that ain’t the case!

“Well… well… [more eye flicking and stammering…] what about wood! If you take a log, it is hard and heavy, but if you burn it, it turns into ash. It’s not the same as it was, but it’s still the same log!” Well, you say, with more patience than this dreck deserves, “You have measured the log at different times, so, yes, it has changed. Your position could be true only if it were both solid and ash at the same time.” In fact, a log has the very specific and measurable identity of, “That which is combustible, and when burned, transforms from heavy and sold into ash.”

(I might get more into Heraclitus later, but for right now, sufficeth it to say that he was a freakin’ idiot.)

So how does this relate to the choices God gives us? Bear with me; we’re almost there.

The law of identity applies to action, too. By the same principles just described, how do you know when something has happened? When you are aware that something has changed – that is, when you perceive change – by one of your senses. When the basic law of identity is applied to action, it is expressed as the law of cause and effect. How do you know something happened? You can see the results. You can see the baseball flying out of the park; you can see the flowers blooming; you can smell the match burning, and feel the heat from it.

Nothing happens unless it was caused, and nothing happens without an effect. Period. We may not know or understand what causes something, but that doesn’t mean it was causeless. Here’s the natural law: “There is no causeless effect, and there is no effectless cause.” You better get used to it. If you want the effect of having your belly full, you better get hopping and cause that effect. If you want the effect of having that good lookin’ person next to you to like you, you better figure out how to cause that effect.

The welfare state that so many people want today consists of a fundamental denial of the law of cause and effect. They want the effects – food, clothes, nice cars, nice vacations, etc – but they don’t want to do what’s necessary to cause those effects. [Let me clarify that: they don’t want to causes those effects themselves. They want someone else to do it for them.]

The laws of identity and cause and effect are merciless! They can’t be ignored or subverted! The good news is, though, that they can be obeyed! If you want food, you can enact the cause of that effect; you can buy food – you can work to get the money to buy food – you can ask a friend for a loan to buy food. However you cut it, it is really cool that you can know exactly what you have to do to cause a full belly. Do you have to do it? Nope. And that, friends and neighbors, is called “agency.” If you enact the cause of a full belly, you’ll get it, but if you don’t, you won’t.

Believe it or not, this is GREAT news! Cause and effect is not a limiting rule; it is the key that unlocks the universe to you… if you have the guts to make it work. You have the choice: cause the desired effect or do without. But guess what? God has agency, too. He will not give you anything unless you have enacted the cause of it, and that cause is, invariably, obeying his commandments.

Our agency is the second most priceless of God’s gifts to us. He does not require us to do anything, but He gives us the opportunity to choose what we will get from Him. He has agency, too; otherwise, He would not be God.

A LESSON IN DECEIT FROM MOVEON.ORG

2011-02-27T11:49:00.000-08:00

In Feb., 2011, a friend posted on her Facebook page a link to an article at moveon.org. The title of the article was “Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP’s War on Women.” My friend is pretty conservative on most things, and posted this strictly to start conversation and get people’s reactions to it. The first several responses were critical of the article and of moveon.org. I wanted to read it for myself, and see what sorts of things they were talking about. I read the article, and decided to look carefully into the first item on it: “Republicans not only want to reduce women's access to abortion care, they're actually trying to redefine rape. After a major backlash, they promised to stop. But they haven't yet. Shocker.”
After doing my research, I posted a reply in the thread on my friend’s Facebook page. This reply, and some of the conversation that followed, is the subject of this blog post.

Here is the link to moveon.org: http://pol.moveon.org/waronwomen/?rc=fb

And here is my response to the article:

Let's look at the first of moveon.org's charges, that Republicans want to "redefine rape." First, the authority for this claim is an op-ed on "The Huffington Post," long known for its objective reporting of the news. That article, in turn..., references an op-ed in the "New York Times," ditto and ditto. Neither article contained a link that I could find to the text of the bill, H.R. 3. So I, left-brained, white male that I am, looked it up. Here's the page with the text: -- http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112%3AH.R.3:

And here's the text that deals with rape:
"SEC. 309. TREATMENT OF ABORTIONS RELATED TO RAPE, INCEST, OR PRESERVING THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER.

"The limitations established in sections 301, 302, 303, and 304 shall not apply to an abortion--
"(1) if the pregnancy occurred because the pregnant female was the subject of an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest; or..." [the next paragraph deals with the health of the mother.]

Clearly, this does NOT redefine rape. It attempts to define the circumstances under which the Federal Government will pay for an abortion. (Personally, I think "forcible rape" is a redundancy. If it isn't forcible, as in the seduction of an underage girl, we need another term for it because it's a different thing - NOT less heinous or despicable! - but different.)

However, see that statement, "The limitations established in sections 301, 302, 303, and 304 shall not apply to an abortion-?" Well, those sections say only that no federal funds shall be used to provide abortion, nor to fund any insurance plan that pays for abortion coverage.

Now here's the kicker: sections 305-308 very specifically state that this bill will not be construed as restricting the ability of states or non-federally funded insurance programs from providing abortion coverage. I gave you the link. Go read it, yourself.

So - huge surprise! - moveon.org has twisted and propagandized the real story to promote their pet agenda - that Republicans are moral cannibals. They deliberately misused the concept of "define," and they deliberately failed to include the entire context. They also very carefully avoided any reference to the bill, itself, using instead other cookie-cutter liberal bilge.

I will not waste my time dissecting their other charges. If this does not thoroughly discredit them in the eyes of all who read this, oh, well.

Rebsarge
Feb., 2011

Letters to Sen. Tom Udall, D-NM, re: DREAM act

2010-11-28T18:01:00.001-08:00

THE FOLLOWING IS UDALL'S LETTER DEFENDING THE DREAM ACT.

November 23, 2010
Dear Mr. Rodgers,
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 729, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2009. I appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Currently, there are thousands of children of undocumented immigrants who seek higher education or wish to join the military after graduating from a U.S. high school.

This year, there will be about 65,000 high school graduates, who, despite their academic accomplishments and strong motivation to succeed, will have to seek alternate routes to achieving success in America. Many believe that providing additional training to these kids will help our overall economy, the individual seeking to improve his or her life, and improve military recruitment and retention.

S. 729 would amend current law to allow children of parents who entered the country illegally to qualify for higher education benefits based on state residence. Additionally, S. 729 would allow certain undocumented immigrants the opportunity to serve in the U.S. Military legally, which could dramatically increase the pool of highly qualified recruits for the U.S. Armed Forces.

Only individuals who entered the United States before their sixteenth birthday, are currently under the age of thirty-five, and have been present in the United States for at least five years immediately preceding enactment of the bill would be eligible for these benefits. In addition, these individuals must also be of "good moral character," and must have earned a high school or equivalent diploma, or been accepted to an institution of higher education. After completing all of these requirements, those who remain in good legal and moral standing after finishing two years of higher education or military service, will earn the chance to obtain legal status as U.S. citizens.

Senator Richard Durbin (IL) introduced the DREAM Act on March 26, 2009. After introduction, the bill was referred to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

As you may be aware, Senator Harry Reid (NV) planned to offer the DREAM Act as an amendment to S. 3454, the fiscal year 2011 (FY11) National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). However, on September 21, 2010, despite strong support from the Armed Forces and many civic and religious groups, Senate Republicans unified in their opposition, and S.3454 failed by a vote of 56-43 to gain the 60 votes necessary to allow the Senate to debate the measure. I voted to proceed to the measure because the NDAA provides the necessary and critical funding for equipment and resources for our service members currently in harm's way. Giving our men and women in uniform, the resources that they need to continue their important work is a priority of mine, and I am disappointed that this funding is being tied up by partisan politics.

Please be assured that I will keep your views in mind should this or related legislation come before the Senate for consideration.

To Rep. Martin Heinrich

2010-11-21T20:52:00.000-08:00

Congressman Heinrich,

I would like to comment on two specific points in your letter to me, dated 19 Nov.. These points illustrate either astonishing ignorance or utter depravity – both on your part.

Your letter says that New Mexicans depend on tax cuts to survive - that our survival depends on the government’s giving back to us some of our own money. In actuality, we depend on our ability to work, generate income, and to manage that income effectively.

The government takes an outrageous percentage of my income and uses it to finance programs and individuals - such as criminal aliens - who further corrode my lifestyle. Then the government says, “Wess is having a tough time. Let’s refund some of the money we shouldn’t have taken from him, in the first place.” Then I’m supposed to be so grateful for this that I approve and support the government and those members of it who have perpetrated this economic sodomy.

I think not.

You imply axiomatic enmity between honest people and wealthy people. This is a page taken from the despicable book of a contemptible president who attempts to sustain his power by setting Americans at each other’s throats – by stimulating class hatred and warfare. It is evil, itself, not wealth, that makes some people evil.

Here are two excerpts from your letter: "Washington made a mess of the budget during the last decade, so naturally the best place to look for solutions is outside of Washington…we must get serious about reducing the budget deficit by letting tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires expire and using this revenue to balance the budget and pay down the deficit."

You are dead wrong on two crucial points. 1 – the ONLY place to look for a solution to the budget problem is in Washington, because the problem isn’t a lack of revenue; the problem is pathological spending by you people in Congress! 2 – The premise that it is moral to destroy innocent people, whose only crime is success, in order to pay for your insanity is so contemptible, so utterly despicable as to beggar description.

The effort to destroy the wealthy class expresses an astonishing ignorance of one very basic, pragmatic fact: no poor person has ever offered me a job! In fact, I’d like to be very wealthy some day. You claim to be my friend and benefactor today. At what point will become my mortal enemy?

If you want to destroy an evil rich person, you might start looking under rocks for Barney Frank.

Heinrich's letter to which I am responding follows.

November 19, 2010
Dear Friend,
Thank you for contacting me regarding federal spending and middle-class tax cuts. I appreciate knowing your thoughts and concerns on this important issue.

On September 24, 2010, I signed a letter urging the Speaker of the House to pass a permanent middle class tax cut. New Mexicans who have worked hard and played by the rules depend on these tax cuts to make ends meet and to support their small businesses. At the same time, we must get serious about reducing the budget deficit by letting tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires expire and using this revenue to balance the budget and pay down the deficit.

We've seen the results of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts for the wealthy--record deficits and a tax code that encourages wealth stagnation rather than innovation. Returning to the same failed policies of the Bush administration, which took our country from surpluses to record debt, is completely unacceptable. Instead, I support cutting taxes for middle-class working families, seniors, and small business owners.

As you are well aware, the United States national debt currently stands at more than $13 trillion. In Congress, I am working to build a strong foundation for long-term fiscal responsibility. That is why I voted for statutory Pay As You Go legislation that forces the federal government to live within its means, the same way New Mexican families must balance their checkbooks. This means new programs or tax cuts do not add to the federal debt.

I am a supporter of the SAFE Commission Act, which would set a timeline for Congress to act on the nation's fiscal crisis. The SAFE Commission would be tasked with holding town hall meetings around the country; getting ideas from working families, small business owners, and local government officials; and submitting a report that balances long-term spending and revenue for the nation. Washington made a mess of the budget during the last decade, so naturally the best place to look for solutions is outside of Washington.

I am also a supporter of the Reduce Unnecessary Spending Act of 2010, which would allow the president and Congress to work together to come up with a package of spending cuts that will eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending.

Again, thank you for contacting me. For more information and additional details about legislation, please visit my website, http://heinrich.house.gov. While you are there, you can also sign up to receive periodic updates on my work in Congress.
As always, I value your input and hope you will continue to keep me informed of the issues important to you.

To my Congressional delegation

2010-11-21T16:33:00.001-08:00

I would like to ask you to support my values and principles on a few specific points.

First, please do not support, advocate, or vote for the DREAM act. It is an abomination of the greatest magnitude. It would wreak even greater havoc on the economic and cultural fabric of this nation. It is very clear that the vast majority of legal American citizens do not approve it. To pass a bill like this during a lame duck session would be an act of despicable passive aggression against the American people.

Second, please do not support, advocate, or approve in any way the appointment of Andrew Traver to the post of director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The man is a degenerate political hack on the best days, and a fascist thug the rest of the time. His appointment would be without virtue or advantage of any kind to anyone – with the possible exception of Al Queda.

Third, please support, advocate, and approve the extension of the so-called “Bush tax cuts.” Our goal should be to eventually enlarge these cuts and make them permanent. The idea, expressed by Obama, that the revenue from these taxes is the rightful property of the government rather than of the citizens who earned it is staggering in its dishonesty and cynicism.

Finally – for today – please resist pressure from the President and leaders of the Democratic party to push through any punitive, spiteful, or vengeful legislation during the lame duck session.

I’ll be in touch later.

Regards,
Wess Rodgers

Review of "Unhearalded Victory - the Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army - 1961-1973"

2010-11-20T22:08:00.000-08:00

Before I say another word, I want to go on record as saying that I was not a combat Marine in Vietnam. I was a radio repairman with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine regiment, 1st Marine Division. I was never in combat, and fired my weapon in anger only one time – well, more in fear than in anger – and the target was a solitary figure in the wire about 2- or 3 o’clock in the morning. My Vietnam experience was endless guard duty, 24-hour workdays, and getting drunk on my nights off. I spent a few days under six months in country at LZ Baldy, near the town of Hoi An, south of Da Nang.

For years, I had what I suppose was akin to survivor’s guilt about not having been in combat. I was just an REMF (ask a veteran about that) and didn’t feel I really deserved to call myself a veteran. The feeling was made stronger by a couple of smart-mouthed jackasses who, upon reflection, probably had even less claim to the title than I. In the early ‘80’s I was attending UNM, and met a fellow who had served two tours with the 5th Marines as a machine gunner. Whether he really had or not is not relevant to this anecdote, because he gave me something very, very valuable. I told him of my feeling of unworthiness and he shut me up right quick. “Look,” he said. “You put your [sensitive masculine body part] on the block. The axe didn’t fall. It’s not your fault. Get over it and get on with your life.” Thinking back on that fellow, I don’t recall his ever telling a single war story. I think he was probably the genuine article.

For my 58th birthday, my brother gave me a gift certificate for Border’s Books. With that certificate, I bought a book called, “Unheralded Victory – the Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army – 1961-1973,” by Mark W. Woodruff, Ballantine Books, 1999. The back cover says that Woodruff was a Marine in Vietnam, and that his book puts forth the idea that the war was an overwhelming victory for American arms. With an eye wary for revisionist propaganda, I started the book. By the time I’d finished it, I was proud, enraged, bitterly depressed, furious, really, really proud, and madder than a sonofabitch.

The book is 344 pages of text with a few photographs, 28 pages of footnotes, and 6 pages of bibliography. It does NOT include the famous photo of the naked little girl running from an American napalm strike, nor of the ARVN general blowing the brains out of a Viet Cong.

Woodruff sets the stage for America’s involvement in the war with a very brief history of the region, and a description of the world political atmosphere in the mid-50’s. To wit, there had been bad blood between the north and south for generations – bad enough to include several wars and a good deal of bloodshed. The French had tried to reclaim their colony after WWII, but couldn’t simultaneously feed that war and keep a legitimate army in France to bolster NATO. The Russians were rattling cages all over the world, and the US was extremely anxious that France be a major player in NATO. The French said they could only do that if we’d support them in Indochina. We supported them with money and material, but no troops. (I have read elsewhere that Ike’s cabinet discussed using tactical nukes to relieve the siege of Dien Bien Phu, but Woodruff does not bring this up.) After the French walked out, we already had many of millions of dollars invested in the region, and a vested interest in stopping the spread of Soviet and Chinese communism. The South Vietnamese asked us for help, and we gave it.

The first myth that Woodruff demolishes is that the war was a civil war. It was not. It was a war of conquest by the North. Period. Funded and equipped by the Russians and Chinese, the North Vietnamese recruited, trained, and equipped entire divisions of Viet Cong. The early VC were NVA in all but uniform and name – a far cry from the barefoot, freedom fighter militia the world press loved to paint them.

The second myth Woodruff tears up is of the efficiency of the VC as fighters. They were dangerous, and given an advantage, could do some damage. But the US and Australian military knocked the snot out of them on a regular basis. The main force VC were especially well-equipped and trained, but never learned to cope with the lightning reflexes of American company and platoon leaders, nor the savagery of the American air-ground team. (Woodruff is also generally complimentary of the ARVN, and especially so of the South Vietnamese Marines and Paratroops, and backs up his opinion with quotations and statistics from both sides.)

The first action that saw US troops meet NVA was, likewise, a serious butt-whuppin’ for the North: The Marines’ Operation Starlite. The Aussies gave them a shellacking at Long Tan. The US Army killed more than 3,000 NVA in the series of actions generally called the Battle of Ia Drang. Americans and Aussies died in those actions, but they gave better than they got, by orders of magnitude. Woodruff offers a list of 66 actions in which the enemy lost more than 500 men each, prior to June of 1968!

Typical of Woodruff’s analysis of these events is a quote by Army general Kinnard: “When General Giap says he learned how to fight Americans and our helicopters at the Ia Drang, that’s bullshit! What he learned was that we were not going to chase him across a mythical line in the dirt.” I have read Giap’s claim in many books, but never Kinnard’s refutation of it.

I have long known that the Tet offensive in January and February of 1968 was an unqualified catastrophe for the Communists, especially the VC. What amazed me was the degree to which I have been misled by the American media reports of that action. For example, I’d always believed the VC had taken most of the US embassy in Hue. In fact, they never got into the buildings. The Marine guards and a couple of soldiers on the grounds shot them down like dogs as soon as they crossed the fence. Another example: how long after the war was it made generally known that the VC murdered many hundreds of civilians in Hue and the surrounding area? We were finding the graves for years. The Tet offensive was not the masterfully organized thunderbolt we’ve been lead to believe. Some NVA outfits jumped off a full day early, so poor was their organization, due in no small part to the intense pressure put on their supply and communication lines by aggressive patrolling. Woodruff does not take a particle from the fighting ability and spirit of the NVA. He shows the courageous stand in the Citadel of Hue for what it was, and gives them full credit. But he doesn’t perpetuate the myth of their being superior to us in any way.

The Allied commanders were congratulating themselves on a brilliant victory, and were dumbfounded to read in the world’s press that they’d been defeated! General Giap, likewise, was amazed to see what the press had made of his debacle. It was at this point that he realized he had divisions and corps unnumbered in the copy rooms and news-stands of the world. He began to attack US troops with the specific intent of causing casualties in order to play his new-found ace for all it was worth.

Khe Sanh gets a chapter of its own, and, like Tet, Woodruff tells a story I’d never heard before. Grossly underestimating the resolve, toughness, and flexibility of the Americans – and their willingness to carpet bomb entire grid squares - Giap figured he’d blow past the little post at Khe Sanh and flood the south with men and supplies. As the American press was portraying the Marines at Khe Sanh and the Special Forces at Lang Vei as demoralized, whipped, and scared, Giap’s divisions were being more than decimated. In the end, he pulled in his horns and slunk back across the DMZ and into Cambodia and Laos, being saved only by the totally arbitrary and whimsical sense of propriety of Washington. Unlike Meade at Gettysburg, the victorious Americans and South Vietnamese were more than ready and able to annihilate the routed enemy.

The reason so many Blacks were killed? According to Black writers and leaders, it was because they volunteered to go where it was hottest. They’d found a way to be, not just equal, but superior, and they took it. Where else have you heard this perspective?

Did the American’s fixation on body count lead to wildly exaggerated claims of enemy casualties? I heard from one of our grunts that if they found a foot, a hand, and a head, they counted three enemy dead. Based on that, I’d always looked with contempt on the published figure of 500,000 enemy dead. However, in the late ‘70’s, Hanoi admitted to more than 1.1 million! Hanoi admitted that!

According to Woodruff, drug use in the US military was less than in the general population in the States, especially in combat units. This is one particular point that has challenged me. I have said that in the six months I was in country, my battalion lost 16 men to drug overdoses. Now I know for a fact there was at least one, because it was a fellow from my platoon. However, being encouraged by Woodruff to really ask myself where I got that number, I must admit it came from scuttlebutt. I have thereby resolved to do some research and see just what the real number was. [As of Nov., 2010, I have not investigated this. One more thing I need to do! WAR]

There is a short chapter on men who lied about their service – some of them so convincingly that they became leaders of veterans organizations, or even counselors to veterans! How many times have we all heard claims of individuals having been in the SEALS, Recon, Green Berets, LRRPS, Operation Phoenix, or other elite organizations? I have met not less than 100 men who claimed to have been in one – or sometimes two! – of these elite groups. I’ve met a dozen Navy Cross claimants, but not one of them appears on the official list of recipients – ditto Silver Stars. Oddly, I’ve never met anyone who claimed to have the Medal of Honor. Could it be that at least one thing is held sacred by liars? I’ve probably met two dozen who claimed to have been assassins with Operation Phoenix. Unfortunately, some of these clowns have received a great deal of attention from the press, and even after their lies have been made known, the press has never recanted or withdrawn the articles and programs.

Woodruff goes to some length to discuss the stories of American troops being abused on their return to the States. This is one item on which I’m unwilling to grant his point. He says that documentable cases of people spitting on veterans or otherwise assaulting them are extremely rare. He posits that most of the stories are hearsay – “A buddy of mine said…” or “…the buddy of a buddy said….” Until, over time, the stories have achieved the status of unimpeachable fact. Now, I know for a fact that when we landed at Seattle for refueling, we were allowed to walk through the terminal for a little while. A few people threw garbage at us and sneered. At least one bitch yelled, “Babykillers!” to the group I was with. That is not hearsay. Other than this, though, I must admit to believing without questioning what I’ve heard from other veterans. Perhaps Woodruff has a point, but I’ll have to see some more serious research done by someone who has no political axe to grind.

In chapter after anecdote after statistic, Woodruff lays down an unassailable case to show that we not only whipped the VC and NVA, we utterly destroyed their will and ability to wage war. This was not, as it has been patronizingly called, a case of winning the battles but losing the war. We won the stinking war, too! The NVA withdrew from the fight. The VC were reduced to starving bands of hobos and bandits, able to do nothing more than mine a footpath or murder the odd schoolteacher.

Giap, with his allies in the press and the US antiwar movement, broke our government’s will to win. No, that’s not exactly it. They convinced our government that we’d lost the war, after we’d already won it! Woodruff devotes several chapters to exposing specific lies and mythology about the war, from “combat correspondents” who never left the Saigon whore houses, or who deliberately and knowingly fabricated stories about the wily Viet Cong making fools of the fat Americans, and on and on and on. Eddie Allen, the man who took the photo of General Loan killing the VC, bitterly regretted what had been made of his photo. (The VC had just confessed to having slit the throats of Gen. Loan’s best friend and entire family, including several children.) Other correspondents and photographers are quoted expressing regret about how their work was either ill-advised, inaccurate, or twisted for propaganda’s sake. Where have you ever heard anything like that?

And you know what makes me just absolutely pig-bitin’ mad? The bastards are doing the same thing again in Iraq! Exactly the same thing! Treason is too weak a word for what they are doing.

This book was obviously a very powerful experience for me. I don’t know just yet what I’m going to do about it, but I think I need to take some action to get Woodruff’s message out. I wish to goodness my own kids would read this book, because it gives a stunning portrait of the power of the press to manipulate a nation’s resolve. This is not just a history lesson; we are seeing this same thing again every day. It is absolutely current events!

I recommend “Unheralded Victory” without reservation to veterans of Vietnam or other wars. (My own father, a Marine veteran of WWII, once sneered at me and said, “At least my generation never got their asses kicked by a bunch of gooks!”) I recommend it to all Americans, including Americans of Vietnamese descent. I recommend it to all members of the press, including those who would write books or produce video works on the present war, whether fiction or non-fiction.

And I’ve just got to say it again: We whipped those suckers to a fare-thee-well, and we didn’t lose the war. The war was won before the politicians went back and gave it away later.

To my fellow Vietnam veterans, “Well done and welcome home.”

Better Men Than I - For My Fellow Veterans of Vietnam

2010-11-20T17:33:00.000-08:00

I received this essay in an email from a dear friend and Army veteran. It moved me deeply, and it seem right to post it here. Semper Fidelis!

Former Secretary of the Navy James Webb, and now Democratic Senator from Virginia, was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and Bronze Star medals for heroism as a Marine in Vietnam. His novels include The Emperor's General and Fields of Fire.

Here he offers a very personal, first hand, relatively short, but ever fascinating, history of the Viet Nam era and, more importantly, of the War in Viet Nam.
Find a quiet place and take the time to read this gritty story! It is very introspective about a generation and a war that is remembered, by so many, both as a gallant battle and a pointless struggle. Their mixed emotions have been greatly influenced by frequently inaccurate reporting; by politicized characterizations by an agenda-driven, elite gentry of the day; by current historians, who cut their teeth during that time, and who were shaped by poor communications of the facts of the War in Viet Nam.

********************************************
Heroes of the Vietnam Generation by James Webb

The rapidly disappearing cohort of Americans that endured the Great Depression and then fought World War II is receiving quite a send-off from the leading lights of the so-called 60s generation. Tom Brokaw has published two oral histories of "The Greatest Generation" that feature ordinary people doing their duty and suggest that such conduct was historically unique.

Chris Matthews of "Hardball" is fond of writing columns praising the Navy service of his father while castigating his own baby boomer generation for its alleged softness and lack of struggle. William Bennett gave a startling condescending speech at the Naval Academy a few years ago comparing the heroism of the "D-Day Generation" to the drugs-and-sex nihilism of the "Woodstock Generation." And Steven Spielberg, in promoting his film "Saving Private Ryan," was careful to justify his portrayals of soldiers in action based on the supposedly unique nature of World War II.

An irony is at work here. Lest we forget, the World War II generation now being lionized also brought us the Vietnam War, a conflict which today's most conspicuous voices by and large opposed, and in which few of them served. The "best and brightest" of the Vietnam age group once made headlines by castigating their parents for bringing about the war in which they would not fight, which has become the war they refuse to remember.

Pundits back then invented a term for this animus: the "generation gap." Long, plaintive articles and even books were written examining its manifestations. Campus leaders, who claimed precocious wisdom through the magical process of reading a few controversial books, urged fellow baby boomers not to trust anyone over 30. Their elders, who had survived the Depression and fought the largest war in history, were looked down upon as shallow, materialistic, and out of touch.

Those of us who grew up, on the other side of the picket line from that era's counter-culture can't help but feel a little leery of this sudden gush of appreciation for our elders from the leading lights of the old counter-culture. Then and now, the national conversation has proceeded from the dubious assumption that those who came of age during Vietnam are a unified generation in the same sense as their parents were, and thus are capable of being spoken for through these fickle elites.

In truth, the "Vietnam generation" is a misnomer. Those who came of age during that war are permanently divided by different reactions to a whole range of counter-cultural agendas, and nothing divides them more deeply than the personal ramifications of the war itself. The sizable portion of the Vietnam age group who declined to support the counter-cultural agenda, and especially the men and women who opted to serve in the military during the Vietnam War, are quite different from their peers who for decades have claimed to speak for them. In fact, they are much like the World War II generation itself. For them, Woodstock was a side show, college protesters were spoiled brats who would have benefited from having to work a few jobs in order to pay their tuition, and Vietnam represented not an intellectual exercise in draft avoidance, or protest marches but a battlefield that was just as brutal as those their fathers faced in World War II and Korea.

Few who served during Vietnam ever complained of a generation gap. The men who fought World War II were their heroes and role models. They honored their father's service by emulating it, and largely agreed with their father's wisdom in attempting to stop Communism's reach in Southeast Asia.

The most accurate poll of their attitudes (Harris, 1980) showed that 91 percent were glad they'd served their country, 74 percent enjoyed their time in the service, and 89 percent agreed with the statement that "our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win." And most importantly, the castigation they received upon returning home was not from the World War II generation, but from the very elites in their age group who supposedly spoke for them.

Nine million men served in the military during Vietnam War, three million of whom went to the Vietnam Theater. Contrary to popular mythology, two-thirds of these were volunteers, and 73 percent of those who died were volunteers. While some attention has been paid recently to the plight of our prisoners of war, most of whom were pilots; there has been little recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.

Dropped onto the enemy's terrain 12,000 miles away from home, America's citizen-soldiers performed with a tenacity and quality that may never be truly understood. Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a tactical level should consider Hanoi's recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 58,000 total U.S. dead.

Those who believe that it was a "dirty little war" where the bombs did all the work might contemplate that it is was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought, five times as many dead as World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in all of World War II.

Significantly, these sacrifices were being made at a time the United States was deeply divided over our effort in Vietnam. The baby-boom generation had cracked apart along class lines as America's young men were making difficult, life-or-death choices about serving. The better academic institutions became focal points for vitriolic protest against the war, with few of their graduates going into the military. Harvard College, which had lost 691 alumni in World War II, lost a total of 12 men in Vietnam from the classes of 1962 through 1972 combined. Those classes at Princeton lost six, at MIT two. The media turned ever more hostile. And frequently the reward for a young man's having gone through the trauma of combat was to be greeted by his peers with studied indifference; of outright hostility.

What is a hero? My heroes are the young men who faced the issues of war and possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country. Citizen-soldiers who interrupted their personal and professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, "Not for fame or reward, not for place or for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood it." Who suffered loneliness, disease, and wounds with an often-contagious elan. And who deserve a far better place in history than that now offered them by the so-called spokesman of our so-called generation.

Mr. Brokaw, Mr. Matthews, Mr. Bennett, Mr. Spielberg, meet my Marines. 1969 was an odd year to be in Vietnam. Second only to 1968 in terms of American casualties, it was the year made famous by Hamburger Hill, as well as the gut-wrenching Life cover story showing pictures of 242 Americans who had been killed in one average week of fighting. Back home, it was the year of Woodstock, and of numerous anti-war rallies that culminated in the Moratorium march on Washington. The My Lai massacre hit the papers and was seized upon the anti-war movement as the emblematic moment of the war. Lyndon Johnson left Washington in utter humiliation.

Richard Nixon entered the scene, destined for an even worse fate. In the An Hoa Basin southwest of Danang, the Fifth Marine Regiment was in its third year of continuous combat operations. Combat is an unpredictable and inexact environment, but we were well led. As a rifle platoon and company commander, I served under a succession of three regimental commanders who had cut their teeth in World War II, and four different battalion commanders, three of whom had seen combat in Korea. The company commanders were typically captains on their second combat tour in Vietnam, or young first lieutenants like myself who were given companies after many months of "bush time" as platoon commanders in the Basin's tough and unforgiving environs.

The Basin was one of the most heavily contested areas in Vietnam, its torn, cratered earth offering every sort of wartime possibility. In the mountains just to the west, not far from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the North Vietnamese Army operated an infantry division from an area called Base Area 112. In the valleys of the Basin, main-force Viet Cong battalions, whose ranks were 80 percent North Vietnamese Army regulars, moved against the Americans every day. Local Viet Cong units sniped and harassed. Ridgelines and paddy dikes were laced with sophisticated booby traps of every size, from a hand grenade to a 250-pound bomb. The villages sat in the rice paddies and tree lines like individual fortresses, crisscrossed with the trenches and spider holes, their homes sporting bunkers capable of surviving direct hits from large-caliber artillery shells. The Viet Cong infrastructure was intricate and permeating. Except for the old and the very young, villagers who did not side with the Communists had either been killed or driven out to the government controlled enclaves near Danang.

In the rifle companies, we spent the endless months patrolling ridgelines and villages and mountains, far away from any notion of tents, barbed wire, hot food, or electricity. Luxuries were limited to what would fit inside one's pack, which after a few "humps" usually boiled down to letter-writing material, towel, soap, toothbrush, poncho liner, and a small transistor radio.

We moved through the boiling heat with 60 pounds of weapons and gear, causing a typical Marine to drop 20 percent of his body weight while in the bush. When we stopped we dug chest-deep fighting holes and slit trenches for toilets. We slept on the ground under makeshift poncho hooches, and when it rained we usually took our hooches down because wet ponchos shined under illumination flares, making great targets. Sleep itself was fitful, never more than an hour or two at a stretch for months at a time as we mixed daytime patrolling with night-time ambushes, listening posts, foxhole duty, and radio watches. Ringworm, hookworm, malaria, and dysentery were common, as was trench foot when the monsoons came. Respite was rotating back to the mud-filled regimental combat base at An Hoa for four or five days, where rocket and mortar attacks were frequent and our troops manned defensive bunkers at night. Which makes it kind of hard to get excited about tales of Woodstock, or camping at the Vineyard during summer break.

We had been told while training that Marine officers in the rifle companies had an 85 percent probability of being killed or wounded, and the experience of "Dying Delta," as our company was known, bore that out. Of the officers in the bush when I arrived, our company commander was wounded, the weapons platoon commander wounded, the first platoon commander was killed, the second platoon commander was wounded twice, and I, commanding the third platoons, fared no better. Two of my original three-squad leaders were killed, and the third shot in the stomach. My platoon sergeant was severely wounded, as was my right guide. By the time I left, my platoon I had gone through six radio operators, five of them casualties.

These figures were hardly unique; in fact, they were typical. Many other units; for instance, those who fought the hill battles around Khe Sanh, or were with the famed Walking Dead of the Ninth Marine Regiment, or were in the battle of Hue City or at Dai Do, had it far worse.

When I remember those days and the very young men who spent them with me, I am continually amazed, for these were mostly recent civilians barely out of high school, called up from the cities and the farms to do their year in hell and then return. Visions haunt me every day, not of the nightmares of war but of the steady consistency with which my Marines faced their responsibilities, and of how uncomplaining most of them were in the face of constant danger. The salty, battle-hardened 20-year-olds teaching green 19-year-olds the intricate lessons of the hostile battlefield. The unerring skill of the young squad leaders as we moved through unfamiliar villages and weed-choked trails in the black of night. The quick certainty when a fellow Marine was wounded and needed help. Their willingness to risk their lives to save other Marines in peril. To this day it stuns me that their own countrymen have so completely missed the story of their service, lost in the bitter confusion of the war itself.

Like every military unit throughout history, we had occasional laggards, cowards, and complainers. But in the aggregate, these Marines were the finest people I have ever been around. It has been my privilege to keep up with many of them over the years since we all came home. One finds in them very little bitterness about the war in which they fought. The most common regret, almost to a man, is that they were not able to do more for each other and for the people they came to help.

It would be redundant to say that I would trust my life to these men. Because I already have, in more ways than I can ever recount. I am alive today because of their quiet, unaffected heroism. Such valor epitomizes the conduct of Americans at war from the first days of our existence. That the boomer elites can canonize this sort of conduct in our fathers' generation while ignoring it in our own is more than simple oversight. It is a conscious, continuing travesty.

To Rep. Martin Heinrich

2010-11-18T18:53:00.000-08:00

Thank you for this response to my note about the Lame Duck session of Congress. Please be kind enough to forward this note to the Congressman, too.

Sir,
I will not go into the complexities of people being told by Congress how much to pay their employees. Instead, I will discuss the concept of “playing politics.”

You use the term to dismiss the positions of others whose positions you cannot refute by reason. In a word, if they agree with you, it’s called “integrity.” If they disagree with you, it’s called “playing politics.”

When so many Republicans were collaborating with the Obama regime and helping to hasten the destruction of our republic, they were called, “visionary,” and, “bi-partisan,” and “cooperative.” They were explicitly playing politics, but it was YOUR politics. The things they were collaborating on were strictly and militantly promoted by the regime.

Now that some Republicans might have developed some guts and integrity, and are rejecting the manically strict line of the Democrats, they are, “playing political games.” I reject absolutely your criticism of them; they have done precisely what I’ve been hounding them to do for years: to impede this nation’s plunge toward a degree of absolute statism that would have the fascists of the ‘30’s and ‘40’s weeping in joy.

Your president has said the election was a mandate from the American people to end the obstructionism and logjams. The man is insane. The election was a mandate from the American people to shove a stick in the spokes of this tax-and-spend velocipede. At this point in our history, the slower we go, the more progress we make.

If you would contribute to the economic well-being of American families, stop promoting programs and ideas that corrupt and destroy the very thing that provides that well-being: capitalism. The vast majority of Americans do not wish to be the kept lapdogs of government, nor to live off the stolen dreams and souls of their countrymen.

I am just getting started, and will stay in touch. Please, Sir, reconsider your support of your president’s self-destructive insanity.

Rep. Heinrich's letter follows.

Dear Wess,
I am disappointed to inform you that Senate Republicans blocked a vote on the Paycheck Fairness Act today, which passed the House nearly two years ago.

The Paycheck Fairness Act gives teeth to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and is designed to combat wage discrimination on the basis of gender.

The fact that there is still not equal pay for equal work in this country is unacceptable. In an economic climate where every penny counts, rewarding work fairly is critical. We must close the gender wage gap by ensuring equality in the workplace—creating a fairer, more just society and strengthening the economic stability of our families.

It is time for Congressional Republicans to stop playing politics with something as fundamental as equal pay for equal work. Americans want and deserve concrete and immediate action to improve the economic security of working families, not political grandstanding.

It’s an honor to serve you in Congress.

To BO

2010-11-18T17:29:00.000-08:00

President Barack Obama
Re: Lame duck session

Sir,
You have made no secret of your intention to push through Congress as much legislation as possible before the will of the people can be asserted in January. Sir, I beg you not to do this. Our ancestors – well, the ancestors of some of us, at least – engaged in mortal combat over the idea that “Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

The lame ducks in the Congress are not the representatives of the people, except in the most disingenuous, twisted way. The people of the United States have spoken, and those members of Congress, along with your policies, have been very soundly and irrefutably rejected. Those of us who have thrown off the yoke of the Democratic party find ourselves, quite literally, with no representation in the Congress. Anything done by you and that Congress is illegitimate at best, probably illegal, and most emphatically immoral in the extreme.

I submit that if you pursue what seems to be your determined course to brazenly spit on the will of the people of this nation, you and your followers will reap a bitter harvest. You will earn the enmity of all who love freedom and the liberties that our fathers – well, the fathers of some of us, at least – fought and died to define and keep. You will be spitting in the faces of the good men and women of all races who built this nation so that their children might be free, and better of than they.

Unemployment and disgrace will be your lot, and your children will live in the shadow of your depravity - and in the wreckage of nation which will be your legacy to them.

I beg you, Sir, in the names of decency and justice, to abandon this plan of yours to do as much spiteful hurt to this nation as possible. It is an evil plan, Sir. Please give it up!

to Senator Jeff Bingaman, 18 Nov., 2010

2010-11-18T17:16:00.000-08:00

Thank you for replying to my letter to the Senator. Please be kind enough to forward to him this letter, as well.

The claim that the Congress has done any of the things listed herein is false. Congress has done none of these things, and has, in fact, done the opposite by slowing or blocking the economic recovery, adding trillions to the cost of health care, and shoved the middle class very close to the edge of a cliff. I shudder to think what damage Congress can wreak in the realms of education and energy!

Here is a news flash, Senator: Congress can NOT do any of these things! Only the American people, acting as free agents for their own good, can do these things. The answer to all these problems is a free market, and a government that protects that freedom. The government can not give anything to anyone without first having taken it from someone else. The entire thrust of the Obama government has been to openly and mockingly rob some people and give a tiny portion of the spoils to others.

There is an old, old proverb that says, "He who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." The Obama government - and, yes, much of the Bush government - has been dedicated with a singleness of purpose to destroy Peter. The Pauls of this nation are all those who are willing to be the lapdogs and kept serfs of a patron-state.

Senator, there is only one thing you can give us that you do not first have to steal from someone else, and that is Liberty. Please, PLEASE! Do your best to stop this suicidal plunge into the kind of state control that the fascists of the '30's and '40's could only dream of.

And speak of DREAM, I vehemently oppose this obscene act, and urge you in the strongest possible language to oppose it!

Thank you,
Wess Rodgers

The note from Sen. Bingaman's staff is shown below.

Dear Mr. Rodgers:

Thank you for sharing your concerns with me regarding various issues. I appreciate your taking the time to write.

I believe that we must advance a forward-looking agenda that will rebuild and strengthen America. Congress has passed legislation to create jobs, restore economic growth, strengthen America's middle class, and provide affordable and accessible healthcare. I believe that we must also focus on promoting an energy agenda aimed at conservation and renewable energy initiatives, and providing quality education opportunities for all Americans. To this end, I will continue to work to pass responsible bipartisan legislation that produces tangible and quality results for New Mexico. I will continue to work to ensure that the values and policies that have made this country great are not undermined. These values center around improving the quality of life for all Americans and upholding the rights embodied in our Constitution. As always, the public plays an important role in our democracy by voicing concern and keeping the government in check, and I encourage you to stay engaged.

Again, thank you for writing. Please do not hesitate to contact me regarding any other matter of importance to you and your community.

Sincerely,

JEFF BINGAMAN
United States Senator

to my Congressvermin

2010-11-05T20:26:00.003-07:00

Congressman Lujan,

I didn't realize until I got my ballot on the 2nd that I am in your district. We live in that little gerrymandered protuberance where district 3 herniates into Paradise Hills. I spent a great deal of time and money fighting against Martin Heinrich, and let you off scott-free. Well, I'm your companion for the next two years.

It is my most sincere hope that, as you look at the shattered remnants of the Democrat population in the House, you will realize that the people have spoken. The fact that you won against an opponent who was ignored by his party (and many of his supporters, like me!) does not mean that you have a mandate to persist in your support of immoral policies.

I read some of your literature, and it is filled with attempts to buy loyalty with money stolen from those who earned it. The government cannot give anything to anyone without first having taken it from someone else. You - and I mean YOU, personally, Sir - cannot legitimize the wanton destruction of some people by giving their looted wealth to other people.

Please vote against the president in all matters. The man is utterly without scruple, virtue, or saving grace. He will lead you to the unemployment line. He said the voters have spoken and their demand is for an end to squabbling and logjams. He's insane. We demanded that he and his party stop their mindlessly savage rape of the American nation and its people. We demanded that HE stop! And by association, that YOU stop!

No human has the right to live at the expense of another. I suggest you begin voting on that principle

GREEN GROW THE LILACS - BRAVE MEN SLANDERED

2010-10-29T14:07:00.000-07:00

With the exception of what people like John Murtha, John Kerry, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have said about our present-day military, the fellows who fought in the Mexican War have taken the worst and most unfair treatment of any troops in US history. I’d like to share with you a quick summary of their story.

First,: The Treaty of San Jacinto VERY clearly stated that the border between Texas and Mexico would be the Rio Grande.

Second: The US tried for more than a year to negotiate a peaceful agreement on the Nueces Strip.

Third: The US smuggled Santa Ana back into Mexico after he promised to use his influence to get their government to negotiate said agreement.

Fourth: After taking over the government, Santa Ana sent troops across the Rio Grande and began to forcibly evict settlers and burn their homes.

Fifth: Zachary Taylor was sent into the Strip to protect US citizens. Col. Cos, of the Mexican army pulled back across the Rio Grande and began to build siege works, with siege artillery – for you civilians, that means big freakin’ cannons - that dominated Ft. Brown, the only military post on the US side. Such works were entirely offensive in nature, and clearly had only one purpose - the destruction by fire of Ft. Brown.

Cos was using the river to haul his artillery to his position, so Taylor ordered a couple of ships sunk in the mouth of the river to block his passage. This is considered, by modern academics, to have been an act of war, and justified what happened…

Sixth: Cos sent cavalry across the river a few miles south of Ft. Brown and began destroying homes and terrorizing citizens. Taylor sent a squad of dragoons down to see what was going on, and Cos' men ambushed them ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE RIVER!.

Seventh: the Americans were overwhelmed and the survivors surrendered, whereupon the Mexicans executed them.

Eighth: later that day, Cos sent Taylor a note saying that a state of war existed between the US and Mexico. Taylor sent a courier to Washington, DC, and one full month after the murder of US soldiers ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE RIVER, the US reciprocally declared war on Mexico. ONE FULL MONTH LATER! So much for the treasured myth that the US started the war.

Ninth: The first two battles of the war, Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, were both fought on the US side of the Rio Grande. When Abe Lincoln and US Grant said, "Show me the spot where American blood was shed on American soil, they wouldn't have had to look far. And Grant should have darned well known better.

Tenth: At both Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, the Mexican forces outnumbered the US forces by more than two to one, and were on the defensive. In muzzle loading combat, being able to pick your ground and stand in good formation to receive the enemy’s attack is a huge advantage. The badly outnumbered Americans whipped ‘em both times. After the fight at Resaca, the Mexican force was so badly whipped that they surrendered.

Eleventh: Taylor’s officers accepted the surrender and paroled the whole lot. In those days, being paroled meant you were released to go about your business, but were honor-bound to not rejoin the fighting. So basically, the Mexicans promised to be good and not fight any more, and the Americans turned them loose.

Twelfth: After going back across the Rio Grande, the paroled Mexicans immediately rejoined Cos’ and resumed arms against the US. Cos immediately began shelling the daylights out of Ft. Brown. The shelling continued until Taylor received confirmation from Washington of the declaration of war, and…

Thirteenth: …crossed the river and whipped Cos’ entire army, again capturing the lot, and again paroling the lot. The Americans, again exposed and in assault, were outnumbered more than three to one, but outfought the Mexicans by a large margin.

Fourteenth: Taylor moved into the interior of Mexico, again fighting the same Mexican soldiers who had again violated their paroles and resumed the fight. This second time, after a really savage street fight, he declined to parole the prisoners, and put them in a prison camp where many of them died from disease. For this, he has been labeled a war criminal.

Fifteenth: Talking about death from disease… of the more than 12,000 Americans who died in the Mexican War, fewer than 1500 died from enemy action. The others died of disease, which sort of hints that maybe the Mexican prisoners were no worse off than their captors. At least they didn’t have to face the Americans again at…

Sixteenth: Buena Vista! In this battle, the Americans were at last in the position of standing to receive the Mexican assault, but were outnumbered more than five to one! At this battle, a regiment of infantry from Mississippi, armed with those new-fangled rifled muskets and commanded by a skinny kid named Jefferson Davis, butchered the pride of Santa Ana’s army in a matter of minutes at what is known in military history as “The V at Buena Vista.”

After Buena Vista, Taylor, his army in terrible condition from fatigue, starvation, and disease, went into camp and pressed no further into Mexico. General Winfield Scott landed with a real American army at Vera Cruz and began a campaign against Mexico City from there. A real army? Well, that brings us to…

Seventeenth: The Mexican army was almost 10 times the size of the US army. They had better, more modern small arms, better ammunition, more and heavier artillery – a LOT more! – and their officer cadre was trained and seasoned by service with the French and Spanish in Europe. By contrast, not a single officer in the field with the US Army had ever fought against any enemy save Indians, and while the American Indian was nobody’s easy meat, fighting them was a vastly different proposition from fighting a trained, disciplined, well-equipped Napoleonic army. The world was much amused that the Americans thought they could whip the Mexicans. The Duke of Wellington said, “Winfield Scott will never leave Mexico except with Santa Ana’s permission,” meaning that Santa Ana would control Scott completely. So…

Eighteenth: The idea that the big, strong, mean ol’ bully United States was picking on a bunch of illiterate, staving peons is a load of crap. Santa Ana would never have started the war unless he was darned sure he could win it. The whole world agreed with him. This is crucial to the story of those American soldiers: THEY WERE IN WAY OVER THEIR HEADS IN EVERY SINGLE RESPECT: numbers, weapons, supplies, experience, training, and knowledge of the terrain. You’ll never hear THAT on an American college campus!

Nineteenth: Scott began his campaign and fought several pitched battles, in each of which his men were in assault against fortified and entrenched Mexicans. A supply officer and an engineering officer teamed up to find trails or build them where none existed, and to move artillery into places that would weaken the knees of any self-respecting cannoneer. The clerk was a slob named Ulysses Simpson Grant, and the engineer was a quiet, reserved fellow named Robert Edward Lee. The US forces were victorious on every field where battle was joined, against all those odds, against all those superior weapons, against all those professionally trained soldiers and seasoned officers.

Twentieth: At the fortress of Chapaultepec, in Mexico City, a company of US Marines scaled the walls of the fort on ropes and ladders, went over the top and kicked the tar out of the defenders. That’s why the Marine’s Hymn speaks of “…the Halls of Montezuma.” And when you see a Marine NCO in his dress blues, notice the red stripe down the leg of his trousers; it remembers the blood of Marine NCO’s at Chapaultepec. Semper Fidelis, Brothers.

Twentyfirst: After Mexico City was captured to the amazement of the world, the Mexican government scattered like quail and had to be rounded up. They were finally all corralled at a town called Hermosillo and presented with a treaty. The treaty offered the cessation of hostilities, and said that Mexico would SELL – NOT GIVE – California to the US. California was worth most of the 11 million dollars the US paid, but the howling, worthless wilderness of Arizona, New Mexico, and part of Utah and Colorado were also part of the bargain. A soldier in New Mexico during the War Between the States observed that, “This territory will be a tax on the nation that owns it.” It’s hard to believe, but in those days, there was some doubt as to who came out on top of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. And something that I’ve never seen listed in a discussion of the treaty is….

Twentsecond: Not only did the US relieve Mexico of the crippling expense of managing a huge and worthless territory, we assumed over $20 million in debts owed by Mexico to European powers. Today, 20 mill wouldn’t wipe the excess make up off Nancy Pelosi’s face, but in 1848, it was a pretty fair chunk of change. But there’s one more thing here that really, REALLY sticks in my crop when I hear the men who fought against Mexico slandered.

Twentythird: After Mexico started the war by murdering American prisoners on American soil – after Mexican soldiers violated virtually every code of honorable warfare – after we paid good money for terrible land – after our men suffered unspeakable torment in battle and hospital, and whipped to a fare-thee-well the largest and finest army in the New World – after we had to force their government to agree to stop the killing - after we saved them from catastrophic debt to European imperialists – WE GAVE THE SORRY SODS THEIR STINKING COUNTRY BACK! SCOTT AND TAYLOR PULLED ALL US FORCES OUT OF MEXICO AND BASICALLY PAROLED THE WHOLE SORRY COUNTRY!

So from now on, when somebody starts trashing the United States about the Mexican War, you might have something to offer to the conversation. Remember those men – those American soldiers – and honor them by not letting the forces of cynicism in America heap upon the veterans of our present conflicts the same post-mortem humiliation that has been suffered by the men who fought a series of doomed battles against an unbeatable foe – and whipped him right down to the ground.

Green grow the lilacs, all sparklin' with dew.
I'm lonesome, my Darlin', since partin' with you.
But by our next meeting I hope to prove true,
And change the green lilacs to the Red, White, and Blue.

legacy

2010-10-22T21:29:00.001-07:00

Every one of us - every, single, individual human - holds a unique and unduplicatable record of the world. Of all those who have lived, not one has seen precisely what we have seen, from precisely the same angle, at the same time, in the s...ame light. As the repositories of memories and knowledge beyond price, it follows that each of us offers to all we meet, comfort, perspective, and testimony that could come from no other living being.

I formulated this idea when I was an atheist, but have seen nothing in my conversion to Christianity to change my mind about it.

Of Sex and Battle Flags.

2010-08-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

A young lady friend, whom I met through one of my daughters, posted a photo of herself on Facebook. She was sitting on the hood of my daughter's jeep, covered in mud. She was wearing shorts and sleeveless shirt, and was leaning back on her hands with one leg drawn up. The picture struck me in its resemblance to some of the famous cheesecake art from the 1940's, and I commented that the young lady would look great on the nose of a bomber. My daughter replied that this was NOT a compliment because in those days, women were seen as meat. Well, my daughter has been right about enough things that I always give serious thought to what she says, especially when she calls me down like that.

So, first of all, the remark was meant as a compliment. The photo was not immodest or in appropriate in anyway; it showed a beautiful woman enjoying herself. There are two elements in this which require comment: 1940's pinup art, in general, and bomber nose art, in particular.

The pinup art of people like Gil Elvgren is absolutely symbolic of the time. Elvgren did some nudes, but they were not as widely circulated as his calendar art, which is trenchant. In fact, I'd never even seen an Elvgren nude until a few years ago. The art to which I was comparing my young friend was innocent and fun-loving. The women were all lovely and dressed in what was, at that time, stylish, modest, and flirtation fashion. They were generally showing a lot of leg or cleavage, and were always in situations where their exposure was unintentional. I'd not be so disingenuous as to say no male ever looked on them with lust, but they were in no way similar to the porn stars or centerfold models of today.

The fact that Elvgren's nudes were not as well known is indicative of the attitude of the time. The vast majority of pinup art represented nice girls, and even a nice girl might have her skirt blow up, or not realize it had hiked up over her back, much as a nice girl today might be leaving church, turn to wave at a friend, and have her skirt blown clear up around her head. They weren't seen as meat, but as ideals to be sought after and dreamed of. If it had been a matter of meat, the nudes would have been more common, and more explicit. Even the pinup nudes of day were immeasurably more modest and prurient than many modern entertainers who are not primarily known as porn models. In fact, I have seen far more skin displayed in VASTLY more provacative ways on women in church. And don't even TALK about the mall! I say, without fear of repudiation, that the idea of women as meat is much, much more prevalent today than in 1943 - and I include modern women in this!

Hardcore porn existed back then, as it has for generations, and some of it was really vile. The popularity of the classic pinup was not because of a lack of anything more explicit. No decent man, possessed of any upbringing, at all, wanted one of those women.

There is no doubt that the standard of what stimulates people who like porn has changed dramatically. It would be fair to say that Elvgren's bare-legged innocents stirred, in some men, the same feelings that modern porn stirs in their grandsons. Fair enough. But that is not an indictment of the genre, itself. If we are to judge the men by modern standards, it is only fair to judge the art the same way. The world in which those men lived was several orders of magnitude more innocent and chaste than ours today. The intent of the art, and the art, itself, was different. A good friend of mine, who has long since passed on, said, "We looked at those girls and thought, "Man! If she were my wife, I'd never leave the house!" How many men today think about having porn models for wives? And that's the difference.

Nose art, or bomber art as some call it, was an outgrowth of the pinup of the day. And for the record, pinup nose art was actually in the minority. A lot of nose art was cartoon characters, song titles, pictures of wives or sweethearts (like Richard Bong's "Marge") and themes of survival (like the B-17, "Round Trip Ticket"). Nose art gave the crew a way of identifying themselves as a unit: "I'm a gunner on "Outhouse Mouse." It also gave them a way of identifying with the machine that would carry them into hell, itself, and hopefully bring them home. The art was like a battle flag - a symbol for rallying. Men have always named their weapons after the women in their lives - or women they wished were in their lives, for instance, the classic American icon of the frontiersman with a squirrel gun named, "Ol' Betsy" . Maybe Betsy wasn't always so old.

Young men would paint a beautiful girl on the side of an airplane, then get in that airplane and fly it into a level of savagery that can scarcely be imagined. On many occasions, the US 8th Air Force lost over 600 men in a single afternoon. The odds of survival were slim. That girl was what gave them hope. She was a symbol of what they'd come home to - if they came home. Yes, they were testosterone-laden horn dogs. It goes with being young and male. Why, even today's young men fit that description. Fighting like that requires the strength, reflexes, and endurance of youth. It requires the sense of rectitude that allows a man to kill others and see his own friends die, and go back the next day and do it again - and again - 25 or 50 times.

A man can't face death like that, day after day, without some affirmation of life and beauty. Those girls gave them that. "They knew what they were fighting for." "Two Beauts" wasn't just a piece of meat. She was a battle flag - a talisman of luck and courage - a woman to ride the river with - a valkyrie who would not only fly with them into hell, but be waiting for them at home. She inspired ten men to do what men should never have to do, and she went with them ever inch of the way

So, my precious, insightful daughter, and my dear, generous young friend, it wasn't with thoughts of lust or carnality that I said you'd look great on a bomber. That particular picture put me in mind of those innocent beauties who inspired our fathers and grandfathers to do the impossible. I said it with the thought that if the young men of your generation have to go into the fire called battle, they could do far worse than fly under your image. It was, most emphatically meant as a compliment. I love you both.

LETTERS TO MY DAUGHTERS

2010-07-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

At the age of 53 years, I married a younger woman, and became step dad to her three daughters. Over the years, I've written several letters to them, most of which have never been delivered. Sometimes, the situation for which the letters were intended passed. More often, I realized the letters would do no good, and just filed them away. Writing like this as always been a good release for me, and a way to organize my feelings.

So the letters here - reproduced in no particular order, are what I've written to the little girls that I have loved more than I never knew I could love human beings. Almost none of these will ever be read by the people for whom they were intended. Maybe - and it's a long shot - your daughters will read them, and, since I am a stranger, perhaps your daughters will learn from them. The Scriptures tell us that a prophet is without honor in his own land. So be it.

Sic Semper,
Rebsarge

THE HAND OF GOD IN THE COMING FORTH OF AMERICA

2010-07-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

This is the text of a talk I delivered to the Albuquerque, NM, West Stake singles branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Don't expect hard corps historiography; I was talking to intelligent young people, not to professors.

I would speak to you tonight on the hand of God in the coming forth of the United States of America. My life has made me more qualified to speak on historical things than on Scriptural things, so we shall all be witness to the work of The Spirit in guiding me. It is my testimony to you that any inadequacy tonight is due to my insensitivity to His promptings.

Just so y’all understand where this is coming from, I am an American, first, last, and always – unabashedly so – unapologetically so – lock and load, come and take it if you think you can so.

Why should we consider the matter of the Scriptural context of the founding of this nation? Because we are being challenged daily on the legitimacy of our nation. We see challenges to our right to our own institutions – including our religion – to our right to stand as equals among the nations of the earth – indeed, to our very right to live. We see challenges to the legitimacy and even the decency of those who founded this nation – and not just the Founding Fathers, but the farmers and shopkeepers and tradesmen who built her up out of mud and wood and iron. We’d better have a pretty good idea of whence we came and why. Our sense of rectitude will be put to every test imaginable, and to some we mercifully cannot imagine.

L. Tom Perry, in the June, 1976 Ensign – “The United States represents the major source of human and financial resources that go into the expansion of the Lord’s work throughout the world. It is very essential that America remain strong in order that the Church can continue to support the Lord’s work in all corners of the earth. It’s true that Saints in other nations are beginning to come to the point where they can be “independent” in the sense that they can supply their own leadership and resources—but there are few nations in the world where the Saints are of sufficient numbers and have available means to be able to support even among themselves the expansion of the Church in a very significant manner.

“In addition to that central idea we have a basic religious message, a unique message to tell the world—and that is that God’s hand was in the founding of America. America is the cradle of the Church. We know that the great reformation of centuries ago was God-inspired. The rediscovery of America by Columbus was God-inspired. The founding of this land with a form of government that would permit the gospel to be restored and be established was God-inspired. This is a great message. A message of fulfilled prophecy. A message that God lives—that he is in our lives, that he is involved in the shaping of history in ways that many people do not know. I tell you, this is great news! The Lord himself said that he raised up “wise men” for the purpose of founding the United States’ constitutional government, a form of government that has been modeled and patterned after all over the world because it provides the kind of freedom, agency, and opportunity our Father’s children need in order for them to grow, mature, and develop.”

There were many prophesies of the discovery and development of the New World.
Nephi had a vision of Columbus: “And I looked and beheld a man among the Gentiles, who was separated from the seed of my brethren by the many waters; and I beheld the Spirit of God, that it came down and wrought upon the man; and he went forth upon the many waters, even unto the seed of my brethren, who were in the promised land.” (1 Ne. 13:12.)

And of the Pilgrims: “And I, Nephi, beheld that the Gentiles that had gone out of captivity were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations.” (1 Ne. 13:18–19.)

There are many Scriptural references to the fact that the New World was a choice land, given to The Lord’s chosen people, but only on condition of their continued righteousness: : “Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be free from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but serve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written.” (Ether 2:12)

The Book of Mormon, quoting Jesus as he spoke here in America, reads:
“This land shall be a land of liberty … and there shall be no kings upon [it]. …

“… For I, the Lord, the king of heaven, will be their king, and I will be a light unto them forever, that hear my words. …

“… For it is a choice land, saith God … wherefore I will have all men that dwell thereon that they shall worship me.” (2 Ne. 10:11, 14, 19.)

Lehi, the patriarch of the colony divinely led to America in 600 b.c., prophesied that “there shall none come into this land save they shall be brought by the hand of the Lord” (2 Ne. 1:6).

The Old Testament offers this oblique prophecy, which applies to us this day, as well:

“And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.

“And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of” (Gen. 28:13–15).

We know that we were created with a level of agency, “In His Own image.” Because of that gift, it is right and just that we be allowed exercise of it. Only through the freedom to use our God-given minds and creative faculties can we be fully human. This is a critical point! Freedom must include both intellectual and physical freedom! To be free to learn and think, but not free to act on what we’ve learned is an obscene contradiction; it would reduce us to roughly the equivalent of spirit beings, whose lack of a physical bodies prevents their acting on the world around them.

To be free to act, but not to learn and think is equally obscene; it would make us blind and dumb beasts, stumbling through life on the guidance of glandular squirtings or raging whims.

Man is a being of integrated mind and body, and if either is constrained, he ceases to be fully human. He has been, as a human, murdered. As we go along in this talk, look especially for points that recognize this principle in the founding of the United States. Observe how the principles of freedom, both intellectual and physical, were established and protected.

After more than a thousand years of intellectual and spiritual stagnation, several things happened with breathtaking suddenness. There was an awakening of learning, brought about through several channels at almost the same time: Marco Polo’s reports of the science of China, Guttenberg’s press, the emergence of strong monarchs who could unify large parts of Europe into nations, and finally, the reformation of the Church by men like Tyndale and Luther. All these things served to generate pressure, like boiler, that had to have an escape. But where could such a relief valve come from?

Was there a place on Earth that recognized the need for agency? Not a one. Every nation then in existence was ruled by tyrants or gangs. The only freedom available was out on the frontier, away from the power of the tyrant; but if one got that far from one tyrant, one was almost surely getting closer to another. Indeed, the idea of mankind being free was looked upon with astonishment; one needed only to look around to see what horrors had come from people being free! Tyranny was a very natural and comforting – if not comfortable – alternative. The most powerful forces in philosophy were unified against freedom, and against the very idea that Mankind was capable or worthy of it.

Thomas Hobbes taught that it was literally criminal for a person to even question his monarch. Emanuel Kant taught that the moral was whatever the state chose to force people to do. Germany, called, “The land of poets and philosophers,” produced a whole string of so-called “idealists.” GFW Hegel taught that mankind truly exists only as a fragment of the state, and the soul of man was a myth outside the context of the state. Schoppenauer recognized pre- and post-mortal existence, and taught that Mankind’s only hope for happiness lay in murdering all women so that the species could become extinct and return to the companionship of God. Serious academic courses on the ideas of these men may be found on any modern college campus. They really did espouse this kind of stuff, and people really did eat it up. They still do.

Thomas More’s Utopia featured a benevolent, totalitarian government and a society in which every person looked, dressed, and acted the same way. There was no theft because everyone had the same thing, and none of it was worth stealing. There was no contention because the government made sure all were the same, and had the same prospects – ie, none to speak of.

De Montaigne expressed a pretty low opinion of mankind: “Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding human condition ridiculous and vain, never appeared abroad but with a jeering and laughing countenance; whereas Heraclitus commiserating that same condition of ours, appeared always with a sorrowful look, and tears in his eyes… I am clearly for the first humor: not because it is more pleasant to laugh than to weep, but because it expresses more contempt and condemnation than the other, and I think we can never be despised according to our full desert.”

(Going back to the ancient Greeks, Heraclitus taught that the only thing that really exists is “flux,” or change. In his model, there is no absolute reality, and therefore, no right or wrong. You’ll see him referred to glowingly in the writing of the Colonial period, and his ideas were central to those of William James, the American pragmatist and founding father of the Progressive movement.)

Jean Jacque Rousseau posited the idea of the “noble savage,” a primal man of great strength and drive, who is seen by the rest of Humanity as a threat to their simpering mediocrity. He said that law, custom, manners, and concepts of decency were merely contrivances of the mediocre masses to keep the Noble Savage in check, and that Mankind’s only progress came when the Savage got the bit in his teeth. (For a look at a modern application of Rousseau’s philosophy, I would direct you to Cambodia in the time of Pol Pot, who was a self-described Rousseauan.)

In England, France, Spain, Portugal, the German states, the Ottoman Empire, these ideas were the heart of government. There were kings and sultans and pashas, but the common denominator was that individual human beings were the property of the ruler. The English, with the Magna Carta, viewed themselves as free, but in religion, economics, and property rights, they held that freedom only at the whim of the monarch.

Against this intellectual and political monolith, a Virginia farmer had the brazen gall to say it was self-evident that all men were created equal, and that they weren’t equally depraved or revolting. This is a critical concept. The United States was not the end result of a long string of causality. It was an outrageous, totally preposterous deviation from the direction taken by the rest of humankind. There were a few tiny sparks – Adam Smith, who wrote of economic freedom, and John Locke, who wrote that the right to life was a “natural right,” based on the nature of Man, but until the 1760’s, they were virtually alone in a cesspool of tyranny and corruption.

I think we need some intellectual Listerine to swish that stuff from our minds. Try this on for size:

"IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

There follows a long list of abuses, some of which could be published today, and the closing paragraph, the thunder of which reverberates through the soul in the passion of truth. Listen for reference to God:

"We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor."

The United States was, from the beginning, a point well off the line – an improbability of staggering magnitude. Unless, of course, you consider the hand of God in all this. All of these widely disparate forces and factors worked together in a subtle, exquisite symphony, drawing slowly toward an earth-shaking climax. In fact, the process was so subtle it has totally eluded historians and sociologists for 200-odd years.

Great, pagan old China didn’t discover the New World, though they were far, far ahead of Europe in exploration and trade. They had the means and the skill, but, for some reason, lost the will, and folded back in upon themselves, changing from the world’s most outgoing nation to a recluse, muttering in its self-imposed exile.

France had the means and the skill, but the King was too absorbed with his petty wars and court intrigues. He turned Columbus down. Great Britain had the means and the skill, and probably the drive, but, like the French, were busy with little things. The Portuguese were too intellectual to be bothered. The Spanish, at first influenced by the same sort of learned fools who hobbled their neighbors, decided to give it a try. They’d turned Columbus down repeatedly, but he kept trying them, and finally, inexplicably, Isabella let him have his go. Had he been commissioned by any of the others, he would have started from their home ports, straight into the teeth of the prevailing westerlies, and would have stumbled back into port, exhausted and beaten by weeks of endless tacking and wearing. Spain owned the Canary Islands, and, departing from there, Columbus slipped into the east winds, which bore him to the New World. Any other choice would have doomed his effort.

The very processes of establishing the colonies that became the US was anomalous. The Spaniards were intent on looting the New World, and saw their colonies only as marshalling points for plunder. (At the sharp end of the stick – the explorers, themselves - there was a tremendous desire to bring Christianity to the native peoples.) The French also wished to exploit the natural treasures of the New World, but lacked the sanguine drive and grand vision of the Spainish. Theydidn’t want to alienate the native peoples, and, while New France enjoyed mostly cordial relations with them, restrictions on immigration kept the colony small, and barely viable. Spain and France were both practicants of a mercantile economy, which sharply limited speculation, risk-taking, and growth.

And Queen Elizabeth I… who saw her coming? Talk about a point off-the-line! Under her, the English Navy became an unimaginably powerful force around the world. Her privateers – Drake, Hawkins, and others – wreaked havoc on the Spanish treasure fleets, further slowing the growth of the Spanish colonies.

The English pattern of using joint stock companies to fund colonies rewarded risk-taking and innovation. The Virginia Company made fortunes for its stockholders, which enabled them to keep pouring resources and humanity into that putrid death trap called Jamestown, the survival of which is another outrageous improbability. At one point, two ships, traveling in opposite directions, in a thousand square miles of ocean, in a dense fog, actually met each other. One was evacuating the last survivors of the winter of 1609-10, and the other was a relief ship. If either of those ships had varied her course by 100 yards, or her time of arrival at that crucial point by 5 minutes, Jamestown would have become another New World cemetery, filled with broken dreams and untold suffering.

Those who settled New England were driven to establish a religious dictatorship. They weren’t here for religious freedom. They had nothing against absolute theocracy, as long as it was their theocracy! Southern settlers were, in many cases, treasure-seekers and gentlemen-adventurers who were allergic to work. How ironic that they ended up here, where the work was brutal and endless! In fact, the early history of the United States didn’t show us much other than an incredible courage and toughness. That courage and toughness were exactly what was required to bring into existence what amounted to a whole new subspecies. The vastness of the American continent made it possible for people to get away from the theocrats and the slackers, and exercise their own agency. Insulated from any possibility of royal favor or nepotistic coddling, the New World rewarded the do-er. It’s written of the settling of the American west that the cowards never started and the weak died along the way. It was equally so of the settling of the eastern seaboard and the first colonies.

Once the colonies were established, it is almost as if the English crown were carefully creating a race of irascible, stiff-necked, free-thinking Yankees. The unpredictable, often irrational combination of neglect and heavy-handed regulation combined to create a highly flammable environment, and then fill it with incendiary characters.

The colonists, themselves- especially those who moved west -were rabidly independent and allergic to constraint. Their leaders possessed some of the most outrageous and individualistic personalities ever catalogued, much less ever brought into one room for the purpose of discussing their passions, and agreeing on who had the best ones! The odds of that bunch of prima donnas agreeing on the color of a horse were near zero. But they did agree, and on some of the most magnificent political abstractions ever put on paper.

From the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, (101: 77-80)

“According to the laws and constitution of the people, which I have suffered to be established, and should be maintained for the rights and protection of all flesh, according to just and holy principles;

“That every man may act in doctrine and principle pertaining to futurity, according to the moral agency which I have given unto him, that every man may be accountable for his own sins in the day of judgment.

“Therefore, it is not right that any man should be in bondage one to another.
“And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood.”

The Scriptures tell us that God the Father assembled this group of individuals for the express purpose of founding the United States, and, considering the odds of that many men of that caliber in one room at the same time… There were good leaders in the early days, but nothing to foreshadow the blinding brilliance of the Founders. They were all born within a 50-year period, and within a thousand miles of each other. Nowhere else in human history is there anything even remotely like it.

Consider this about the republic they created. It was a government of law, with strict constraints on that government. But what good is law? Plenty of people break the law, some of them not in government, at all! The law tells us how to act, and the consequences if we misbehave. Where do those consequences come from? From the government. What if the government breaks the law? Is it likely to levy consequences on itself? Not likely. So the law is no constraint on the government, at all. It is like shouting at the wind; you can do it all you want, but you’ll only get hoarse.

There’s an old saying that the only real safety device on a car is the nut behind the wheel. So it is with the law. The only binding parameter on the law is the character of those charged with enforcing it. Character. If those in government are of good character – honest, with integrity – they will keep the law because they believe it is right to do so. If those in government are not of good character, they will not keep the law because they believe it is inconvenient or unprofitable to do so. In the end, it is not the law, but the commitment to it of those in authority who make a government work.

Our Founders gave us a government that is absolutely and explicitly dependent on the character of those elected to office. They believed so much in the inborn common sense and sagacity of the American people that they set up a government that recognized and operated on character. Of course, they also gave us the 2nd Amendment, in case we needed to correct a bad decision, but that is a topic for a wiser man than I.

This government of character and law recognizes Human agency. It leaves us free to choose and to act. It leaves those in government free, too, though I can’t believe the Founders could have foreseen the depravity this would unchain in the world. There is no prior restraint placed on Americans. We are free to decide. We can make deposits in the bank, or we can rob it. However, according the law, at least, there are consequences of misbehaving, and if we choose the action, we also choose the consequences. The man who introduced me to this church once observed that you can’t pick up just one end of a stick. If you pick up the end called action, you also get the end called consequences. In the entire, sorry catalogue of political ideas by which men have tormented themselves, the ideas upon which this nation was based are the only ones to recognize the essential nature and agency of Mankind.

And this brings us back to the starting point: a large number of our countrymen, and a majority of the rest of the world, hate us for our freedom. They see freedom as bad. All that freedom and expression is so untidy! It gets in the way of organization and system. They say the world would be a better place if we’d all surrender our precious FREEDOM – emphasized with little claw marks in the air – and let the real professionals – academics and bureaucrats – run our lives in a way that would benefit everyone. It’s as if More, Kant, Hegel, James, and all the other over-educated idiots were brought back for a cast encore.

We believe that our Father in Heaven is loving and just. Think of a creature, created with very specific traits and abilities – the greatest of which, and those that literally define the creature - are the ability to think, learn, and decide its course in life. Now think of an environment, created specifically for that creature, that clasps shackles upon those great abilities, and forces the creature to deny its creation and the very things that define it. Could this possibly be the work of a God that is loving and just? I’ll answer that for you.

Nope.

In 1831, the French writer, de Toqueville, wrote, “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world of commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

I will close with L. Tom Perry, again from the bicentenniel year of 1976:

“The success of the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War came about through men who were raised up by God for this special purpose. You must read the Declaration of Independence to feel its inspiration. You merely need to study history to recognize that a group of fledgling colonies defeating the world’s most powerful nation stemmed from a force greater than man. Where else in the world do we find a group of men together in one place at one time who possessed greater capacity and wisdom than the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and others? But it was not to their own abilities that they gave the credit. They acknowledged Almighty God and were certain of the impossibility of their success without his help. Benjamin Franklin made an appeal for daily prayers in the Constitutional Convention. In that appeal he said, “If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? I believe without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the building of Babel.”

“The Constitution was and is a miracle. Both Washington and Madison referred to it as such. It was an inspired document, written under the divine guidance of the Lord. James Madison, commonly called the Father of the Constitution, recognized this inspiration and gave the credit to “the guardianship and guidance of the Almighty Being whose power regulates the destiny of nations whose blessings have been so conspicuously displayed to the rising of this republic.” (Prologue, p. 95.) We believe that the Constitution was brought about by God to insure a nation where liberty could abound, where his gospel could flourish. Joseph Smith said, “The Constitution of the United States is a glorious standard; it is founded in the wisdom of God. It is a heavenly banner.”

As we pray daily to God for guidance, we could do worse than to make the same plea that George Washington made in his prayer for our country. Notice how many points of the Gospel he touched on, though this was many years before the restoration.

“Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage, we humbly beseech Thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of Thy favor and glad to do Thy will.

“Bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning and pure manners.

“Save us from violence, discord and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way.

“Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought out of many kindreds and tongues.

“Endue with the spirit of wisdom those whom in Thy name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be peace and justice at home, and that through obedience to Thy law, we may show forth Thy praise among the nations of the earth.

“In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in Thee to fail.

“All of which we ask through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”

WHO'S AGAINST VIOLENCE?

2010-03-28T21:44:00.000-07:00

28 Mach, 2010

There is an explicitly held myth among the American people, promoted shamelessly by the media and the current administration, that only our side is capable of violence. We hear, daily, about threats against some legislator or bureaucrat. Some of it is petty, like the fellow on a radio show who said he’d like to slap Nancy Pelosi off the podium. Some of it is more serious, and some threats may even be credible, but it doesn’t matter if they are serious or credible. People believe they are true.

First and foremost, I want to urge all who read this to turn away from violence or threats of violence. At this point, we are talking about a few individuals who are closer to the edge than the rest of us. I believe that any man can be pushed or cornered into a violent act, but some folks are a lot easier to corner, and require a much shorter push. We all know a few of these. I urge you to talk to those people and calm them down. Get them back from the edge. If the government or the media wish to fabricate an incident, they will. We all know about a certain radio station on the German-Polish border, and in my opinion, our present administration is capable of something like that.

But let’s not give them anything legitimate. If they fabricate something, their lies will be exposed to the world, and even if they aren’t we will still have that certainty that we are innocent of wrongdoing. At the end of the road, that certainty will be worth more than you can imagine. I pray daily they don’t take this road, and I don’t seriously believe they intend to. They are opportunists, and if we give them an opportunity to pass some whirlwind, draconian, Stalinist gun control measure, they’ll do it. But let’s not see devils where they aren’t. There’s enough real ones out there; we don’t have to invent them.

And by the way, there was a poll a few day ago that supposedly revealed that a huge percentage of the American people – I heard numbers from 20-50 percent – believe that Obama is the anti-Christ. Horsehockey. First of all, things aren’t nearly bad enough now for Satan to play his ace. Second, while I do think Obama is a thoroughly evil man – a fascist, a racist, a liar, and a megalomaniac – he’s a two-bit damnyankee punk. Anyone who thinks that little slime is the best Satan has is REALLY kidding himself!

At this point, we are talking about a few individuals, but if there is an action of sufficient magnitude or violence, our enemies can use it to launch a campaign of oppression like we’ve never seen in this country. If that were to happen, there are some very thoughtful, reasonable, and ethical men and women who would fight back. Violence feeds on itself, and before long, we’d have a sure ‘nuf war on our hands. The horror of such a thing cannot be described in human language, and at this point, even if we were to bring the government to terms, what good would it do us? The voters would be so traumatized by the bloodshed they’d turn right around and elect another control freak who promised to enslave them into safety. Of course, there’s always the option of just installing someone and keeping him in office by force of arms. Yeah, right. That’s a real moral solution.

I have not read a single syllable about violence coming from the left, and there are two reasons for that. First, the media doesn’t print it when it happens. Second, the left uses violence as an everyday tool of political action, but they don’t do it themselves. They are not like us. If an individualist gets mad enough, there’s a good chance he’ll engage you directly. That doesn’t mean the violence will be measured or appropriate! Consider Tim McVeigh. He took direct action, on his own. He was a punk, too, and a discredit to our side, and there’s others like him. But McVeigh did it himself. A statist won’t do that. A statist will have the police, the military, the FBI, the IRS, or the UN do their killing for them. I don’t know if Stalin ever killed a single person with his own hands, but he used the power of the state to kill millions. If the statists want to kill you, they’ll arrange a wrong-house drug bust, or set up a scenario like Ruby Ridge or Waco.

After Waco, especially, there was a cry of rage against the FBI and BATF, and it was fully justified. However, the real cry should have been for the head of Janet Reno. She was the murdering liberal monster who signed off on using the armed might of federal law enforcement to incinerate innocent citizens on the grounds of the most preposterous of fabrications.

When the media says the left, or the progressives, or whatever they call themselves, don’t hurt people, don’t you believe it. During the 20th century, alone, almost 100 million human beings were murdered by their own governments, and not one those governments was based on the principles upon which our own government used to rest. It was not individualists or capitalists who did the killing; it was statists who were convinced they were justified in killing people who wouldn’t go along with their despotic schemes.

Now someone is going to say, in a snarky, NIGGYSOB tone of voice, “Well what about Hitler? What about the KKK and all their lynchings?” Right. Hitler was the darling of American Progressives. A lot of them thought we were on the wrong side in WWII. When our troops started finding the Dachaus and Treblinkas, American Progressives never said, “Holy crap! Were we ever wrong about that dude!” No, they quietly abandoned the stage for a time and waited for the American people – grossly mis-educated by the Progressive public school system, I might add – to forget about their love affair with fascism. Now they’re back again, trying to convince us that Hitler was actually an individualist and a capitalist. This is why it is so dangerous to use a model of “left-vs-right.” Those terms are meaningless in this context. Hitler killed a lot of socialists because he was a socialist and didn’t like them hooking on his corner.

And as for the KKK, they are fascists, pure and simple. A lot of people claim the Klan is the extreme of right-wing, or of conservative. Bull crap. On the continuum of political thought, they are right down there on that end with the Obamas, the Hitlers, Mussolinis, and the Pol Pots. Whether it’s the left end or the right end is irrelevant; it’s the statist/fascist end. You will never hear one of them urging his fellows to moderation and peaceful resistance as I am now urging my friends.

Statists, by whatever name you wish to call them, have killed a hell of a lot more people than individualists. Don’t you be hanging your head about being on the end of the continuum opposed to the present administration.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Rebsarge

CALL TO ACTION

2010-03-26T22:50:00.001-07:00

26 March, 2010

First of all, here’s to the boys of the Sibley Brigade, especially Pyron’s command, who waged bloody battle at Apache Canyon on this day in 1862. Deo Vindici, Boys. Some of us remember.

Now. This is the first thing I’ve written since the health care monstrosity was signed. I went into a terrible funk for about three or four days, and it took me until now to get really mad again. It’s one of those deep down mads that can drive me all day and all night. As we begin this new phase of the war against America, I’d like to make a couple of observations.

First, let’s not be shooting our mouths off in public or on the net about violence. Even if you just say how much you’d like to poke Harry Reid in the nose, someone in the media will make you sound like Josef Mengle. A few people have been foolish enough to make threats or openly threatening gestures, and you can see what’s been done with it. Now we all know that these fascist bastards are perfectly capable of pulling off another “radio station on the Polish border” stunt. They are 100% capable of manufacturing a story about an incident that never happened. It’s perfectly possible that the statists will start the ball, and because of that, we need to be ready. However, violence is neither necessary, appropriate, nor moral at this stage of the process.

It is also possible that some loony character will get stupid and do something outrageous and give the statists a reason to come down on us, but there’s little we can do to prevent that. We all know there are Tim McVeighs out there. Let’s not do anything to add fuel to the fire. We are all pissed off and ready to throw blows, but let’s not be fantasizing about it in public. Some people are right on the hairy edge of reason, as it is, and the fiery rhetoric of people who are supposed to be calm and rational will only serve to encourage them to jump. If you know someone like this, do all you can to talk them back from the edge.

What do these scum in our government fear? I think there is one thing they fear more than death: loss of power. Everything they have done or said has been aimed at gaining power over us. They despise us. They think we are fools and worse. The very idea of being on equal footing with us lowlifes will drive them nuts. They are willing to destroy this nation and risk armed insurrection - and even their own deaths - to gain power over us, and if we can mount a credible threat to strip them of that power, I think they’ll go over the edge.

How do we do that? We get politically involved. I am stunned at the number of otherwise rational people who still think this doesn’t affect them. I have heard all the tired excuses: I don’t have time… it’s so negative, and I don’t like to dwell on it… I don’t care about politics… I don’t know what I can do… Bull crap. In this conflict, there will be no innocent bystanders. Every man, woman, and child in this nation stands to lose wealth and freedom. We will be free or we will be slaves – all of us – and there will be no one just left on the sidelines if we lose. The scum aren’t going to enslave only those who fight against them; everyone will lose.

So here’s what I’m preaching tonight. (1) Find a group and join it. Whether it’s a Tea Party group, your local Republican party, or whatever; get to be part of a group and participate to the fullest extent of your ability. No excuses. (2) Find a candidate or two who seem to you most likely to support freedom and fiscal sanity, and do all you can to support them. Remember that local government affects your life, too – maybe more than the national government in some ways. You don’t have to have a presidential candidate to support. Governors and national legislators are incredibly important. Even state legislators are important. No effort will be wasted, so grab ‘holt of something and work hell out of it! Alternatively, if there’s a congressvermin you particularly despise, find out who’s running against him or her and throw in your support (3) Talk to people. Some people are on the fence, and might, with appropriate encouragement, get off on our side. Yes, there’s a hell of lot of ‘em who are totally and deeply committed to the enemy’s agenda. Don’t waste your time on them – don’t turn your back on the bastards, either. Some of ‘em are dangerous! (4) create an email distribution list. Then find a few writers you like, who express the greatest ideas in the most powerful ways, and forward their work to your distribution list. (5) Spread ideas like those expressed here to all your friends. If you don’t like what I’ve written, find someone you do like, or write it yourself. But COMMUNICATE!!! And for gosh sakes, don’t fall into forwarding a lot of claptrap about Madalyn Murray Ohair, or other such drivel! Use Snopes or one of the other urban myth-busting sites, but don’t just forward crap without checking it out. And remember that people will add, “This checks out on Snopes,” in the knowledge that few others will actually look it up.

The vast majority of people are overwhelmed at the magnitude of the task. No individual needs to fight the whole fight alone. We can each find pieces of it that are within our ability, and with commitment, we can make all of those little pieces into a vast, unstoppable whole.

In summary, find a local group you can participate with. Find reasonable candidates and fight like hell to get them elected. Talk to people and convert those who are capable of rational thought – and don’t worry about the others. Use email to spread good ideas and good writing. Encourage all of your friends to do the same.

You don’t have to do it all, but you do have to do what you can. Whether you join the fight or sit it out, you’ll still end up a serf. Might as well fight, right?

MONEY, 4

2010-03-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

If the government gets its wealth by taking it from the people, where do the people get theirs? Why, you silly goose, they go to their mailboxes and pick up their welfare checks!

Sorry. Couldn’t resist a teensy bit of sarcasm. But the question is a darned good one, don’t you think? In a legitimate, moral society, where does the average person get wealth? Let’s revisit a couple of principles. There are very few points on which modern liberals have less of a clue.

First, there are only three ways of getting wealth: produce it, steal it, or beg for it.

Second, from the nature of Man, remember that he is an individual being, whose rational mind directs his body in pursuit of what he needs to live as Man.

Third, there is no such thing as a right to enslave. If a man, to live as Man, must be free to think and act accordingly, every, single individual human being has the same right. Freedom does not mean that strong people get to abuse those who are weaker.

Fourth, nothing in the world is of any value until acted upon by human beings. An ocean of fish is just that until human action transforms it into food and lies about the ones that got away.

It is my belief that no wealth has ever vanished. Once created, it may be transformed, fragmented, reconstituted, traded, or squandered, but it never vanishes. Even that which is squandered by one person becomes the wealth of another. In this vein, let us go to the beginning.

Some fellow went out and picked some berries and brought them home to his sweetie. She ate them, and used the energy from them to give birth to their baby. The baby grew up and went about doing things to sustain his own life and the lives of his family – and in our wildest dreams, that of his sainted old pappy, that berry-pickin’ motor scooter. That original batch of berries was transformed from plant reproductive matter to wealth – ie, food – by human action. It was transformed into new life, and the process was repeated ad infinitum to this very day. (A thought occurred to me in this very instant: my job at a cell phone company puts me in the position of feeding my family by my work with Blackberries. Humpf. Never thought of it that way.)

Every human being who goes out into the world to make his own way takes with him the very same, original wealth that was possessed by our berry-picker: his mind and body. A friend of mine used to say that from the neck down, we’re worth laborer’s wages. From the neck up, we’re worth fortunes unimagined.

The story has been told so many times we are tempted to regard it as a hackneyed old cliché, but it is a true story. A young man enters the workforce as a laborer, using his muscles to earn his bread. By dint of focus and determination – both products of a rational faculty – he earns promotion and greater pay. He uses his mind more and his muscles less, for while a strong back may swing a true hammer, an active mind might direct a thousand strong backs. There is an exquisite synergy in this. Just as a man’s body without his mind is a corpse, all those strong backs would wallow in the mire but for the genius directing them to build a hydroelectric dam. And likewise, just as a man’s intellect without his body is a ghost, that marvelous computing engine would be just so much horsepower vented into the atmosphere without those magnificent, strong, willing, and skilled hands on the tools.

When the statists talk about “leveling the playing field,” they are talking about subverting and destroying this synergistic process. In fact, nature has provided the ultimate in level playing fields. We all come on the field with the same tools: a mind and a body. He who enacts the causes of wealth will reap wealth. He who enacts the causes of poverty will reap poverty. What could be more elegant and equal? Be careful, now; we are still speaking of a legitimate, moral society. I’m fully aware that all manner of forces act to pervert the game.

Foremost of these is the power of the statists in all levels of government. They tax the successful with a progressive income tax. They reward the lazy and foolish with money taken from the successful. Tell me how this is a “level playing field:” One man works his guts out, risks everything, and creates a fortune, but after taxes, has enough to feed his family beans. Another man quits school, turns up his nose at the military, blows every penny he gets on booze, hookers, and lottery tickets, and still has enough to feed his family beans.

And what of the weak, the lame, the mentally challenged? They certainly don’t come to the game with the same tools with which others are blessed. Many of them do, however, come with tools of some fashion, and by the charitable grace of their better-endowed neighbors, they, too, can produce within their ability. For those who just flat lack usable tools, there is charity, and free people have proven again and again that they are the very souls of charity. Look at the millions collected for Indonesia, Haiti, and Chile, and this is hardly the most prosperous of times for the US.

How do you get the rich to be charitable? First, let ‘em be rich! Were you ever offered a job by a poor guy? We all know the parable of the widow’s mite, and it is a wonderful lesson, but where, in this great, mediocrity-worshipping, whining, sniveling, statist mob in which we live do you ever hear the story of the rich man’s talents? You won’t, because it is not fashionable to think that rich people are decent human beings who are willing to share their good fortune with others. Sure, you’ll find the odd skinflint who hides his money in his mattress and won’t give a nickel to help anybody, but he’s the exception. (See also, “TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS, posted in this blog in Feb., 2010..)

In this line of thinking, however, is a terrible trap! Ronald Reagan was one of the most egregious purveyors of this error. He proposed that men ought to be free to become wealthy so they could pay more taxes. Baloney. (I almost said horseshit, because that’s so much more fitting a term.)
The reason for allowing men to be free to become rich is… allowing them to be free! Men ought to be free because that’s the way they are made. If a free man shares his wealth, good for him. If he doesn’t share, good for him. He may have to answer for it later, but that’s not up to us!
If money is honestly earned, how it is spent is the business of no one save him who earned it.

You see, statists aren’t against money. Oh, they rail against the rich and preach cannibalism (a 1970’s bumper sticker said, “EAT THE RICH.”) but they really love money as much as the next fellow. The difference between decent people and statists is that the former don’t care how money is spent, as long as it is earned honestly. The latter don’t give a rip how it’s earned as long as they get to control how it’s spent. Look at this: our present government isn’t trying to keep people from earning more than a certain amount; they just want to control how all that money is spent. Look at the graft and corruption they are willing to overlook, as long as they get their hands on the proceeds.

The source of wealth is human action applied to nature. Period. Wealth does not come from a government printing press. Sorry.

MONEY, 3

2010-03-11T22:36:00.000-08:00

Okay. We’ve got the beginnings of a civilized society. We’ve got specialization of labor, law, police, military, and politicians. In spite of a great many false starts and wrong turns, the basic, innate decency of our species led us in a generally liberal course. People really did try to have decent government, and there were some genuinely decent people involved in government. From those instances, great progress was made, and marvelous principles were recorded. Yeah, I know. It took a long time, and there was a lot of blood and misery along the way, but we finally arrived at a sweltering room filled with grouchy old white guys in 1787. The document they crafted did, indeed, authorize the national government to hire employees and provide certain services. Obviously, all that government service requires wealth to pay the police, military, and judges. Ah. Back to money.

Where does a government get its wealth? From the people. What does government produce? Force. Nothing else. What was the first and only purpose of government? To be the trustee of force in the name of the people, according to the letter of their law. The people did the producing, and the government kept the boogers off ‘em. Does government fish? Make shoes? Run a blast furnace? Drive a truck? No. The government wields force. Remember that, because we’ll get into it in spades later. So if a government does not produce anything, where does it get its operating capital? From the people. The people have to want the government badly enough to voluntarily share their sustenance with it.

What is the maximum amount of wealth a government can have? 100% of the wealth of the people. Can a government have more wealth than that? No. It can print more money, but it can’t have more wealth. Like the ancient sheep deposits, the money printed by the government is a promise to redeem the notes for something of real value, generally specie. The money can’t have more value than the total, net wealth of the people.

Let’s say the entire wealth of the people is a hundred bucks. (Obviously, this is pre-Bush/Obama.) Now let’s say the government wishes to fund public art by buying, at outrageous prices, pieces of crap no working man in his right mind would even look at, much less buy. So the government seizes the entire wealth of the nation. Aesthetic enlightenment, however, comes high, and will require a lot more than a C-note, so the government just prints some more money – let’s say, a thousand bucks worth. Now the government has enough money to pay some bug-eating hippie for his abstract of sticks and turds.

But wait a minute. What is the wealth that stands behind that grand? There is still only a hundred bucks worth of real wealth. So instead of each dollar being worth 1/100th the wealth of the people, each dollar is now worth 1/1000th the wealth of the people. This is called inflation. There’s more money in circulation, but the value of each dollar is only a tenth what it was. That means the hippie got ripped off. Sure, he got paid, say, 800 bucks for his creation, but he can only buy 80 bucks worth of groceries.

Do you really think the grocer would have failed to notice the government’s theft of his money? What’s he going to do? He’s going to increase his prices in order to maintain his lifestyle because everything he buys is also ten times more expensive.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? Well, it is simple. In fact, it is so simple that many hundreds of hours of college education are required to obfuscate it. That, or a single election cycle.

Let’s digress for a minute. When you give someone a dollar for something, you are giving them one dollar’s worth of your life. You worked a certain period of time for that dollar, so, while the dollar is money, your time and skill are wealth. Next time someone says, “It’s only money,” run like the devil; he may be serious. Money stands for wealth, which stands for life. When a man pays you a wage, he is saying, “I value your time and skill enough to give you this portion of my life in exchange for it.”

When you go to a store to buy something, you tell the cashier, “I want to buy that.” The cashier asks, “Can you prove you’ve done something for someone else that they thought was worth a dollar’s worth of their life?”

You say, “By golly, I have, and here’s the dollar bill to prove it.” When you trade money for the goods that service your life, you are trading not only your own lifespan, but the lifespan of everyone involved in the chain of production and trade that led to your having that dollar bill. The moral person gets wealth – or money – only by providing services to other human beings.

Wow. How contemptible is that?

In a moral – ie, free – society, men and women trade freely of their time, skill, and the wealth they produce. If a free man sees a person in need, and wishes to help, he has the option of giving that person a bit of his life. This is called charity, and in my opinion, it is a very great virtue. Americans have always been the most charitable people on Earth, in no small part because they have had wealth enough to share. Ever try begging an apple from a starving guy? You’ll pull back a nub.

In a statist – ie, government controlled – society, men and women are taxed. The government takes money from them and redistributes it to those whom the government thinks deserve it. That is to say, some people (the government) take money from other people (the taxpayers) for the benefit of still other people (the supposedly poor.)

So, if the goal is to take care of the poor, and since the government cannot have more wealth than the combined wealth of its citizens, could not the poor be served as well by charity?

Of course, they could. Money given freely would serve them as well as money taken at gunpoint. It makes no difference to the poor. To the people in government, however, it makes an enormous difference. If men were left free to decide whom they would support, they might choose to support some who would not support government.

People in the government must enact force to take money from those who have it, keep a good bit for themselves, and give the rest to those who will vote for more government. There’s a cliché’ that says, “He who robs Peter to pay Paul can generally count on the support of Paul.” The statists will tell you that charity is inadequate – that only welfare, enforced at the point of a gun, can be adequate. That’s a stinking lie. The difference between charity and welfare is liberty.

MONEY, 2

2010-03-11T22:07:00.000-08:00

As this hypothetical society grew more populous, the number of thieves also grew. Folks had to go about armed, and stay alert at all times. It’s hard to fish while you’re looking over your shoulder for a claim-jumper. Someone noticed that old Joe, over there, was one tough cookie, and the claim-jumpers left him alone. “Say, Joe. If you’ll keep these creeps off my back, I’ll give you two fish a day.” Joe says that’s okay with him, and you have the first military – and, coincidentally, the first protection racket.

There are side-trips involved in this particular bit of social Darwinism: things like the invention of hemp rope, whereby hangs more than a tale, and the invention of shooting irons. But those are for a different story.

As things evolved, someone decided that in his little corner of paradise, they could put the thieves on notice by posting a sign that said, “No thieves allowed.” Such a sign would have no impact unless everyone in the area agreed to beat the crap out of any thieves that came around. The locals agreed, and they put up a sign, and the law was born. Joe noticed the sign, sauntered over and said, “I’ve got some tough boys here with me, and we’d be happy to enforce that sign if you’ll pay us.” And that was the first police force. It worked pretty good until Joe or one of his shoulder-strikers decided to hold the people up for more pay, at which time the whole community rose up and lynched the overly ambitious ones. When the lynching was done, they remembered what a pain it was to have to go armed and looking over their shoulders all the time, so they reestablished a police force, hopefully with better, more clearly defined terms and conditions.

One of the principles they recognized was that an appointed law enforcement agent could be much more objective in enforcing the law than could individual citizens. If enforcement were left up to each citizen, no two people would do it the same, and the potential for law suits (in those days, pronounced “Doo’- uls”) was great. I’m sure there was some smooth talking and some serious negotiation, and no end of false starts and hemp resets, but the process was on its way.

The documented portion of the evolution of human government begins ‘way after the actual beginning. Who knows what permutations it went through? I’d be willing to bet, though, that the main force driving the development of government was a desire for loot and power. The looting and rape would have gone on forever but for the advent of a few enormous, almost tectonic forces: population growth, travel and commerce, the invention of the longbow and firearms, and the discovery of the New World, to name a just a few. But tyranny has never given up, for one of the greatest failings of our kind is the desire to rule over others – to take their property, their wealth, their sons and their daughters. And much that is noblest in our kind has been done in resistance to that tyranny. The Scriptures tell us there must be opposition in all things. Indeed, basic epistemology tells us that we distinguish one thing from another by the differences, or opposition, between them.

Great virtue can be seen only in the company of great vice. Freedom can be seen only in the company of tyranny.

So now we have an economy based on the specialization of labor, we have boundaries, custom-become-law, we have rudimentary government, and we have police. Remember this, though: the first and true repository of the law was the people. The law started with the desire of the people to be free from the burden of constant vigilance and arbitrary standards. The people voluntarily gave enforcement of the law to the police. The police never owned the law. They were custodians of it, holding it in the name and interest of the people. When some college-educated fascist sonofa… JERK starts wringing his hands about people, “…taking the law into their own hands…” it makes me want to puke. In the hands of the people is precisely where the law was conceived, born, and raised. When the government becomes the enemy of the law, whether through neglect or tyranny, or pure-dee thuggish desire for power, it is the right of the people – nay, it is the solemn responsibility of the people - to take the law from the government, beat the crap out of the government, and set up a new government.

Is there a more eloquent, succinct way of saying all that? Let’s try this:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

I love that! In case you don’t recognize it, it’s from the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson in the summer of 1776, and I’ve never seen a better, more powerful exposition of the principle.

ORIGIN OF MONEY,PT 1

2010-03-08T22:17:00.001-08:00

WARNING: There may some tongue-in-cheek attempts at humor in the following. No, I do not seriously propose that it happened just this way, but I’m pretty sure the general steps were something like this.

In the beginning, there were few people, each doing everything needed to sustain his own life. They must have been pretty good at, too, because before long (geologically speaking) there were a lot more people. Nothing they needed to live was naturally available in usable form. Fruit and berries had to be picked. Firewood had to be carried. Fish had to be caught. The stuff was out there, but required human action to make it usable by humans. An ocean of fish are of no value until someone catches one of ‘em. A fish is just a fish until human action turns it into food; it’s the human action that adds value.

(A side note on the concept of “natural resources:” The fish gain intrinsic value in their natural state only to the extent of someone’s ability to envision what might be done with them in the future. Oil wasn’t worth squat until some sharpie figured out how to make it slick and burn it.)

One day, someone realized that he was awfully good at making shoes, but not much of an axe maker. His neighbor was a heck of an axe-maker, but ran around barefoot. So this guy goes to his neighbor and swaps a pair of shoes for an axe. Now multiply that process and the principle upon which it is built many, many times and you have an economy and a society built on the free exchange of goods and services. Everyone did what he did best or enjoyed most.

There are only two ways to get what you need: you can produce it or have someone else produce it for you. If you choose the former, your only concern is for the ownership of the raw materials. If you choose the latter, you have two ways of getting it from the other person: without his permission or with it. If you choose the former, you are a thief, pure and simple. (Paying someone else to do your stealing for you doesn’t keep you from being a thief; it makes you a politician, and your employee a tax collector.)

If you choose the latter, there are but two ways of getting the other’s permission: trade for the stuff or just ask him to give it to you. If you choose the latter, you are a beggar. No shame in that, as it stands, but not much future, either. If you choose the former, you must trade something for his goods. Since you are doing this with his agreement, it must be something he will voluntarily accept in exchange. This takes us directly back to the first question in this reduction. If he wants shoes, you must either make the shoes, yourself, or get them from someone else.

To boil all that down, there are three ways of surviving: produce what you need (Whether for self-consumption or trade makes no difference; you are producing the stuff, yourself.), beg for it, or steal it. You are a producer or a parasite. Period. No other options. No amount of window dressing or semantic hair splitting or image-building terminology will change this fact. Beggars and thieves are parasites, consuming the living tissue of the society that keeps them alive. No thief or beggar can survive without producers to prey upon. Do you hear me, Barack?

So in the beginning, wealth was real: shoes, axes, fish, sheep, grain, etc.

When you trade sheep for apples, you have to (1) find an apple farmer who likes mutton, and (2) carry your sheep to him. Man! What a pain! Then someone had a real brainstorm. “I’ll leave my sheep in town, and give the apple farmer a note saying he can have them in exchange for the apples.” That worked pretty good until some sharpie figured out that he could lie about having the sheep, at which point the apple farmer quit accepting paper as trade. It couldn’t have been long before some enterprising gent said, “Tell you what. You leave the sheep with me. I’ll give you a certificate saying you’ve deposited them with me. The farmer knows I’m trustworthy, so he’ll take my certificate, and you won’t have to carry your sheep with you. In exchange for loaning you my reputation, I’ll keep one of the sheep for myself.” Ah. The birth of the banker.

Pretty soon, folks were running all over, exchanging sheep certificates for apple certificates. This not only freed people from hauling sheep all over creation, it also opened up choices. For example, let’s say the apple farmer didn’t like mutton, but he really needed some wheels for his ride. He traded the sheep certificate to the wheelwright for a new set of wheels. There were a jillion different certificates – sheep and apples, of course, and cows, shoes, fishhooks, barrels, plows, services – like plowing, or babysitting – you name it. However the trading was somewhat limited geographically because, while the wheelwright didn’t take the sheep, directly, he still had to be close enough to ‘em to herd ‘em home.

Then someone came up with one of the greatest ideas in all human history. “Let’s set up a standard of exchange, and pick some substance to represent it. The substance needs to be rare enough that not everyone can gave an unlimited supply of it. There were probably a few false starts before they settled on precious metals – silver and gold. It worked like this: you sold your sheep to a broker (dare I say a stock broker?) in exchange for specie. You then carried the specie to the apple farmer and traded it for apples. The farmer had the freedom of trading the specie to anyone for anything. It was universal. It was convenient. It was so flippin’ cool! A bit of this stuff in one’s pocket could be transformed into anything in the world! Even services, like plowing, could be exchanged for it, and it for services. Shoot, folks could be found who would do stuff in exchange for it, and thus was born the idea of working for wages. (And so, too, was born the blues.)

Only one, final evolution remained. Gold is heavy, and if you are going very far it’s a pain to carry much of it. We go now back to the banker. If a man’s reputation were sufficiently strong, he could write out a certificate saying you had so much gold on deposit with him, and you could travel with the certificate. Fits right in your pocket. Your trading partner, even across the Alps, could give that certificate to his banker in exchange for gold or other certificates, which could then be exchanged in Germany as easily as your original could be in Italy. Gold on the banks of the Med could finance business clear up on the North Sea. It was too good an idea to keep secret, and pretty soon, the whole world was using money. Money was not the root of all evil. It was the mechanism by which human society broke the chains of feudalism and spanned the globe. It enabled – and continues to enable – the development of technology, medicine, art… you name it. Any human being can trade labor for money and thus finance his life as a producer, rather than as a parasite.

Barter was surely the basis of it all, and some advocate a return to a barter system. That would catastrophic. Think about the people who work in a semiconductor factory. They make the chips that drive the computers that have changed the world. Without them, all industry would fail, and all finance and investment would crash. But the people who make the bloody things have skills that are utterly useless outside the factory. How much market is there in an agrarian, barter economy for someone who can deposit 12 microns of boron on a silicon substrate? And when you concentrate thousands of people in a small area like a factory town, how can you get enough cattle and cabbage in there to feed ‘em all? The smell, alone, would destroy an economy!

You have to have money to run an industrial or technological society. It was money that freed us from the soil – money that freed us from the plow and the forge – money that let us develop the technology to take us to the stars – money that let Ray Kroc feed cheap hamburgers to more people that were living on Earth 100 years ago. Money the root of all evil? No, it is one of the noblest and finest inventions of the human mind. Money was first built on the integrity and trustworthiness of a handful of visionary men. That’s something, isn’t it? How can something built on trust and honesty and decency and hard work be bad? And yet, it is almost universally regarded as vile and filthy, the source of sin and depravity.

How did that happen?

FREEDOM FROM RESTRAINT

2010-02-21T22:22:00.001-08:00

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

TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS

2010-02-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

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

Man and Freedom

2010-02-16T01:28:00.003-08:00

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.

ANNE FRANK TRAVESTY

2010-02-13T22:42:00.001-08:00

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

FOR THE CHILDREN

2010-02-13T22:39:00.001-08:00

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.

Haiku-a-day

2010-02-08T21:59:00.000-08:00

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.

WEALTH AND SLAVERY

2010-02-07T21:16:00.001-08:00

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.

values

2010-02-04T19:20:00.000-08:00

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.

Writing as a means of communication

2010-01-30T03:51:00.001-08:00

I’ve been doing technical writing in one form or another for 30-odd years. Some of it has been fairly informal, like instruction on Civil War drill and tactics. Some of it has been in electronics or other manufacturing themes, and some in firearms instruction, history, or philosophy. Based on comments from people who have read it and used it on their jobs, I’m pretty good at it. I am, however, pretty old-fashioned in my approach to writing. I thought I’d take a break from the political crap and write a little bit about writing. Not saying I’m a geek, but it will be fun to write about my pet peeves in modern technical writing. I’d be interested in seeing your examples of new plots to sodomize a perfectly useable and innocent language.

Peeve number 1: Making up words when there are perfectly serviceable words available. Many of these made up words end in “-ness,” such as “sameness,” or “perfectness.” See there? My spell checker didn’t even pick up “sameness” as a phony word! We used to use “similarity,” or even “congruence.” The very worst places I’ve ever seen for made up words were the publications of politically correct, over-educated HR professionals. A lot of this stuff serves utterly no purpose, though, not even political correctness. For example, when I worked at Intel, I saw a notice posted in a hallway saying that one of the large machines was going to be removed from the factory, and that part of that hallway would be closed. However, the machine wasn’t going to be removed. It wasn’t even going to be “uninstalled.” (Thank you, Microsoft, for that one.) It was going to be “out positioned.” A memo at Digital urged us not to commit totally to our jobs, but to perform “…one-hundred percently.”

Peeve number 2: The use of certain words that are considered “professional.” The prime, number one example of such a word is “utilize.” Somewhere, I read a gag that said, “Never use use if you can utilize utilize.” When I worked at Digital Equipment Corp., one of my main jobs was editing our manuals and technical processes so our workforce could understand them. The training department had called in a contractor to do some literacy testing on the employees, and found the average reading level to be 3rd grade – and this included the engineers and managers! I would take these impossibly technical, jargon-filled monstrosities, and cut them down to a tenth their original size, add some illustrations, simplify or remove the jargon, delete the redundancy, and give them back to the engineers or managers for approval. In most cases, my work was approved and applauded. There was one engineer, though, who was utterly manic for using utilize. I had substituted use for utilize about 100 times in this one document. He red-penciled every stinkin’ one of ‘em and kicked it back to me. I changed ‘em again and sent it back. He complained to my manager, who wrote me up for being a racist. It seems I was forcing my white male chauvinist pig grammar down the throats the downtrodden masses. Another example of this is the phrase, “at this time.” What the hell’s wrong with saying, “now?”

Peeve number 3: Jargon. Actually, there are days when jargon takes over the top three spots on this list, all by itself! I work in the cell phone business, which is essentially an offshoot of the computer business, and jargon is omnipresent. I have counted up to 10 different terms for the same thing. In fact, I’ve seen three or four different terms used for the same thing in the same paragraph! Jargon is unavoidable is a highly dynamic, rapidly-changing field like technology, but, for cryin’ out loud, let’s not do our best to breed it! This is one point where professional writers have really let us down. The engineers who are inventing this stuff have to make up words because they are so often dealing with new things for which there is no established word. But when they send their work to the technical writing or training departments, there needs to be some sanity. This is not just a pet peeve of an old, anal-retentive wrench-bender. On my job, I would wager we waste tens of thousands of dollars every year due to jargon. For example, if I’m looking up how to do something on a phone, the first thing I have to do is figure out what it’s called. We do have a glossary, but it is time-consuming to look in it, and it only contains a small percentage of the terms, anyway. So I search for every similar term I can think of. Eventually, I might find it, but oftentimes I have to call for help. There have been times when I had found the answer, but continued to look for 20 or 30 more minutes because the terminology was different, and I didn’t know I’d found it!

As an aside, I would dearly love to have the time and money to spend a year or so researching and writing about the cultural implications of keyword-based information systems. (Keyword. Shouldn’t that be key word? Again, my spell checker thinks it’s okay. Humpf.) One person’s key word is not necessarily another person’s key word!

Peeve number 4: Acronyms. This is pretty much a corollary of number 3. The very best technical writing nowadays will have a glossary appended, or, if it’s an online document, a link to a glossary. How much time is wasted in looking up crap that should have been explained in the text? Instead of saying something like, “Change the ESN on the account,” and then basically putting the training on pause while the reader goes to the glossary to find ESN, the writer should say, “Change the Electronic Serial Number, or ESN….” From this point on, the acronym can be used because it has been defined in the context of the instruction. When I started at Intel, in 1993, they had an acronym dictionary. It was about 100 pages. The last version of it that I saw had almost 500 pages, and I think they finally gave up trying to document it, at all. I have seen sentences that were literally nothing more than a string of acronyms. Insane.

Peeve number 5: Noun pileup. Rather than using adjectives or adverbs, or modifying sentence structure to facilitate clarity, most tech writers will string together as many nouns as they possibly can to describe something. We might see something like, “cell phone pricing guide feature change order update analysis.” I have seen as many as 11 nouns used in a row, with no other grammatical elements. The problem with this is epistemological. The human mind can only keep track of about five or six concepts at one time. Leonard Piekoff called this the “crow epistemology.” I’ll write an essay on this, but for now, it just means that the human mind has to hold each noun as a separate entity until it is connected to other entities by modifiers, conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, etc.. By the time you get to the end of a string of nouns, you have lost track of the first ones. In this example, we’re actually talking about an “analysis of the update to the way we order changes in pricing on our cell phone features.” When you take a common, straightforward phrase, jargonize it with non-existent words, string a bunch of them together, and then convert the resultant nonsense to an acronym, you have pretty much destroyed any hope of meaningful communication.

Peeve number 6: Himherheshe, also known as him/her, he/she. This is truly a masterstroke of the Progressive/political correctness movement. For centuries, it was accepted that, unless the gender of the subject were specified, the masculine form was to be used. This served us quite well until some educators managed to corrupt the conceptual ability of enough of their students that they were no longer able to comprehend the generalization. A huge number of women today are utterly incapable of seeing themselves as part of a species called “Man.” This has trivialized the very real discrimination against women, and wasted uncounted hours of time, and gallons of ink in re-writing otherwise legitimate and intelligible documents. Instead of focusing on real stereotypes, such as one I grew up with in which men were engineers and women were secretaries, we have been forced to focus on not giving imaginary offense to people who are committed to being offended by our very existence, anyway! I have seen otherwise good writing reduced to jibberish by gender/slashing. (Hey! I just invented that term! Maybe I’ll acronymize it, too!) It clutters the epistemological landscape like speed bumps. The mind must stop, read the gender/slash, and then go on. Personally, I will rewrite an entire passage, even using passive voice if I have to, in order to avoid a gender reference. Another popular solution is to mix references. Use masculine in one sentence, and feminine in the next. In his state of the union address, Barack Obama used an example of “… a student who…. her education.” I don’t remember him using a masculine reference, so maybe we should all be offended. To me, it seemed patronizing and petty, as if he found it necessary to remind us that a student could, feasibly, be a female. If he’d said, “…a young woman who… her education,” it would have been perfect.

Peeve number 7: Non-parallel construction. In one paragraph, a writer might list things in order from A through D, and in the next, list them C, B, D, A. This isn’t critical until the subject is a sequence, as in a progressive assembly line, or a programming sequence. Many instances of this are related to jargon, where the writer will change terminology in the middle of a piece. Parallel construction is another epistemological device that helps the human mind organize and retain information. Let’s say we have a process that involves five standards of five elements, each. If the information can be organized so it presents all the first elements as similar, or related, and all the second elements as similar or related, the whole is vastly easier to learn and retain than if it is presented as 25 conceptually unrelated elements.

Peeve number 8: Inverted sequence. Ever go through a complex set of steps, and then find an admonition at the end that says, “Before starting the above procedure…” or “The above procedure should be used only if….”? Makes me nuts. Put the conditions at the front, and keep the steps in numerical order. I have seen, recently, an instructional article that had about 15 steps. Step 6 said, “Before performing step 5…” What kind of an idiot writes things like that?

Well, this seems to have done wonders for my insomnia, so I’ll let it ride for now.

The Lunatic-in-chief

2010-01-28T18:01:00.000-08:00

28 Jan, 2010

Last night, we listened to President Obama’s 2010 State of the Union address. At the time, I was stunned and, apart from the odd expletive, speechless.

Today, after thinking about it for a few hours, I have found my voice. We heard a full hour of the prating of a madman, and I will not flinch from calling him that. The man is crazy as a pet coon, but not nearly as endearing.

Over and over, he mentioned bipartisanship, and condemned it as being unproductive. He called those who have criticized him “petty.” He implied repeatedly that the only reason anyone disagreed with him was because they were a Republican. He criticized conservative talk radio and TV. He openly criticized the Supreme Court, and pretty much declared war on it. He accused the justices of undoing 100 years of progress, presumably referring to the establishment of the mongrel, bastard, statist model that has gotten us where we are today. We witnessed one of the justices of the Supreme Court, Sam Alito, shaking his head and telling the President of the United States, on live TV, in the chamber of the Congress, that he was wrong! How out of control is that?

Near the end of his speech, he called on Congress to join him in doing what was right for the children of America, whether or not it is what the parents of those children want. In other words, the president of the United States, on live, world-wide television, declared war on the opinions and desires of the American people. The government will do what’s best for your children. You sit down and shut up. The Congress gave him a standing ovation.

Very early in his speech, he said that a lot of Americans were mad at Washington for not being able to fix their problems. That’s probably true, because we have a hell of a lot of welfare looters and parasites and blood suckers in this country, and most of them just love the lunatic-in-chief who promises them the blood of their betters. However, Obama seemed totally unaware of the premise upon which this statement was based. That premise is the fundamental fallacy that we are all sitting out here waiting for Washington to take care of us. Nothing could be further from the truth!

A majority of Americans understand that Washington is the cause of most of our problems! We don’t want Washington to fix our problems; we want Washington to get the bloody hell out of the way, leave us the hell alone, and let us fix the problems, ourselves! The man can’t grasp that. He is intellectually and emotionally unable to grasp the fact that neither his race, party affiliation, ethnic/cultural background, nor any other superficial feature is what makes me despise him. I despise him because he is a statist tyrant, and the only things keeping him from being a mass murderer of his own countrymen are (1) the Constitution, in tatters though it might be, (2) time, and (3) about umpteen million of us sitting out here on a very large mountain of rifles and ammunition.

Barack Obama truly believes the crap he’s been advocating. He really, truly believes that he knows best what we need. He truly believes that no reasonable man could ever disagree with him. He truly believes that he has a mission to drive this republic in a direction that almost none of its citizens approves.

The man is mad. Stark, raving mad. He is as delusional as was Adolf Hitler, and, if you look at his theories, he’s every bit as savage and dangerous. He wants to make his mark on the world. So did Hitler, and he did. It wasn’t a very happy mark, but, by golly, he made it!

This man is very, very dangerous, but he’s not the most dangerous force in America. Even in collusion with Pelosi, Reid, and that set of execrable vermin, he’s not the most dangerous force in America. Even in collusion with the drooling, tyrant-worshipping news media, he’s not the most dangerous force in America. No, that honor goes to a very large segment of the American population.

We have, on the streets of this great nation, people who actually approve of Barack Obama! They still, after all that’s happened, think that moron is doing a good job! Those people, with their votes and their financial contributions, are far more dangerous than Obama. If Obama were taken from us tonight, the danger would not be gone because those people would still be out there.

Every time I see an Obama bumper sticker, I involuntarily wonder if the driver is a racist, a fascist, or an idiot. Those are the three categories of people to whom Obama appealed during the campaign, and those are the people who put him in power. Those people are still out there, doing all they can for him, whatever their motives.

And even if we were rid of Obama, they’d still be there, festering in our midst. So what do we do about them? Nothing. That’s right, not a flippin’ thing. Why? Because this is still a free country! We aren’t them! We don’t threaten or intimidate those who disagree with us – unless of course, they come after us, then that’s a whole ‘nother deal! Those people have a right to think what they want and vote for whomever they want to vote for, and we must never do anything to interfere with that, tempting as it may be. If the rights of any citizen are threatened, the rights of all citizens are threatened. The principles that disenfranchise one man may be used to disenfranchise any man.

What we must do is beat them at their own game. We must find candidates who have some moral fiber and a grasp of the nature of a free republic, and we must vote for them. We outnumber the idiots, so we can vote this current pack of scum out of office, and the idiots who put them there can’t do a thing about it. If they try…. well, that’s another story too.

But make no mistake: Barack Obama is a madman, and in combination with the Congress and the media, is a very dangerous madman. Let’s get him and his spawn out of power and see if we can salvage this nation.

My Testimony

2010-01-24T20:54:00.000-08:00

Time for station identification. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, generally called the Mormon Church. I believe in God The Father, in Jesus Christ, His Son, and in the Holy Ghost. If you were wondering where I stand on all this, here you go. I have to say, though, that Article 12 is a real challenge for me these days. And please note, none of the articles say we believe everybody but us Mormons is going to Hell. Here are

THE ARTICLES OF FAITH OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER DAY SAINTS

(History of the Church, Vol. 4, pp. 535—541)

1. We believe in God, the Eternal Father, and in His Son, Jesus Christ,
and in the Holy Ghost.

2. We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for
Adam’s transgression.

3. We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be
saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.

4. We believe that the first principles and ordinance of the Gospel are:
first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third,
Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying
on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.

5. We believe that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by
the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach
the Gospel and administer the ordinances thereof.

6. We believe in the same organization that existed in the Primitive
Church, namely, apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers, evangelists,
and so forth.

7. We believe in the gift of tongues, prophecy, revelation, visions,
healing, interpretation of tongues, and so forth.

8. We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated
correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.

9. We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal,
and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important
things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

10. We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration
of the Ten Tribes; that Zion (the New Jerusalem) will be built
upon the American Continent; that Christ will reign personally upon
the earth; and, that the earth will be renewed and receive its
paradisiacal glory.

11. We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the
dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same priv-
ilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.

12. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and
magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.

13. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous,and
in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the
admonition of Paul - We believe all things, we hope all things,
we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all
things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report
or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

----Joseph Smith

It is my testimony to anyone who reads this that the Book of Mormon is precisely what it claims to be: the word of Almighty God, transcribed from original records by His Prophet, Joseph Smith. No sane person can read that book and honestly say it is the work of a barely literate 14-year farm boy. It is not of this world. It is either of Heaven or of Hell, and there is no way Hell would ever offer up such a powerful, consuming testimony of The Lord Jesus Christ, of His mission, His gospel, and His atonement.

If the Book of Mormon cannot be of Hell, nor of a charlatan, then it must be of Heaven, and that is my personal testimony. If you would like to know for yourself, I’ll get you a copy. Pray about it, then read it, but don’t read it the way I did the first time back in ’76 or ’77. I was determined to find holes and absurdities in it, and like anyone who looks at something with a prejudice, I saw what I was prepared to see. However, what I saw had no relation to what I was actually looking at!

I caution you to not be like the Pharisees, who stood eyeball-to-eyeball with the Son of God and wanted to pick nits about the clothes, or his grammar, or whatever. Read the book with an open mind, to see if it has anything to offer you. If it does not, it can’t hurt you, and you will be the better for having experienced a wonderful story.

The Savior told Peter that the testimony, or witness of the Holy Ghost was the rock upon which He’d build His church. Do not apply the wisdom of Man to the Wisdom of God; you’ll come up ‘way short. Yes, you might think you’ve found holes in the book, but you will be shortchanging yourself. Build your testimony on the rock, not on what you think you know.

There are some who will remember my atheist/Objectivist period. For about 15 years, I was a fire-breathing atheist. No one could stand against me because of the polemic skill provided by Ayn Rand, Leonard Peikoff, and other Objectivist philosophers. I talked several people away from religion, and that is something I deeply regret. I’ve found a few of them and told them I was wrong. The problem was that my life wasn’t working the way I wanted it to. Ironically, it was Rand’s principle of questioning your premises that allowed me to get outside my box and look at religion. At the time, I was associating in a business venture with several Mormons, and listened to what they had to say. Their lives were producing what I wanted – not just materially, but in all regards.

I started reading the Book of Mormon and took the standard six introductory lessons from the missionaries. I fooled around with it for two years. My wife at the time was fanatically anti-Mormon because she was once abused by a punk of a husband whose family may have been Mormon. Never mind that if the church had known what he was doing, he’d have been excommunicated – assuming he really was a member of the church.

Anyway, I wore out about a dozen missionaries, asking a million questions. Finally, one of them told me straight out that they had other people to work with, and I was going to have to fish or cut bait. Someone had given me a few copies of a church magazine called, “The Ensign.” One day, when my wife was out of town, I was sitting in the floor, reading one of them. Suddenly, without warning or preamble, I had the most overwhelming sense of being inundated – literally flooded – with warm, soft love. At the same moment, I had an impression of something in my head saying, “This is right, Wess. What you are doing is right. Go to the next step.” The feeling and the message lasted about three or four minutes, then faded, leaving me filled with a drowsy peacefulness.

Now anyone who knew me in that era will tell you that such emotional responses to what I called ghost stories were very, very far from my character. I’m capable of crying at John Wayne movies, or about episodes from history. Emotional response has always been one of my best things, but never anything like that. And never without some warning, or some external cause. Afterward, I went back and read that page again, and there was nothing there that could have elicited such a response.

The next week, I made an appointment to be baptized, and have never questioned or regretted the decision for an instant. Since becoming a member of the church, I’ve sinned pretty significantly a few times, but on other occasions, when I’d done my part, I’ve had revelations that were absolutely, unquestionably NOT things I’d ever come up with – and they were always right.

Again, I testify to all who read this that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is just exactly that: Christ’s church in this, the final dispensation of Earth’s history. I also promise you that if you do not agree with that, nor believe the things I’ve said here, you will not go to Hell. Well, you might finagle a ticket there on your own, but it won’t be because you aren’t a Mormon. Jesus is the Christ. He lives. He loves us all, and He died on the cross to atone for our sins. He will return to claim the Earth that is rightfully His.

I lay this, most humbly, at your feet, and call you my brothers and sisters, in the Name of Our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Nature of Man with a gun

2010-01-24T20:00:00.001-08:00

If it’s proper for Man to be free, what about those among us who would destroy our freedom? How should we respond to them? Should we resist? I believe that tyranny should be resisted with heart and soul. I include the governmental type of tyranny, and also the local, individual type. The thug who sticks a gun in your ribs in the parking lot is the soul mate of Nancy Pelosi. Both deprive you of your right to learn, to think, and to act – ie, of your very humanity. If it is right that Man should be free, it must also be right that he have the means of defending his freedom. Otherwise, we’d have to say, “It is right that Man should be free, unless someone disagrees.”

Should there be a limit to the level of tyranny we might morally resist? For example, should we be allowed to resist that tyranny which can be resisted with spears, only, or should we be allowed to resist that which can be resisted with rifles? Any attempt to delimit Man’s means of defending his freedom also delimits his freedom and makes it conditional upon the whims of other men. Should we be allowed to posses the means of resisting the tyranny of a single thug, but not of a gang? Again, that is the equivalent of saying, “Man ought to be free, unless several people think otherwise.”

No one who has ever come face to face with a gang in a dark parking lot will ever ask why a citizen needs a battle rifle! You’re damn right they are meant for killing large numbers of people! Sometimes, you run into large numbers of people that need killin’!

Just as freedom must include the entire rational process as well as physical action, so must the right to defend that freedom include all circumstances. It must also include, not only the means (a firearm) but the freedom to use it in self-defense. For example, some Brits claim they have the right to own guns, but the limits placed on their carrying, or even handling of their own guns makes such a claim preposterous. Their government has said, “You can have title to these things, but we will maintain possession of and control over them, and if you ever touch one without our permission, we’ll crucify you.” That is NOT the right to self-defense with deadly force.

The right to self-defense with deadly force is part and parcel of the right to live as human beings. To infringe on it is the same as censoring the news or literature, or forbidding certain inventions (as the kerosene lamp was once banned to protect the candle makers). To force Man to live at the pleasure or whim of his neighbors or his government is nothing short of slavery, which is nothing short of the murder of his humanity. It is one thing to publish an article of faith that says we sustain the law, and to invite or even beg folks to subscribe to that article. It is quite another to deprive them of the very means of disagreement. To limit Man’s choices is Satan’s plan, or, if you prefer, it is anti-evolutionary because it stands in the way of natural selection. Either way, it is tyranny and it is despicable.

The idea of licensing firearms, or requiring permits for their purchase or carrying is just as much an infringement on freedom as the outright banning of arms. “Oh, no,” you say. “There’s nothing wrong with reasonable controls and restrictions.” Bullcrap. Who’s reason? Yours? What if my reason says I need to be packing right now, and I don’t have time to fool around for three months getting a permit? License and permit laws say, quite literally, “You have a right to defend your life ONLY if you fill out this form in triplicate and take this course from some guy who may or may not be worth shooting, himself. If you encounter a deadly threat in the meantime, your right to life is hereby revoked.”

“But felons shouldn’t be allowed to have guns!” Bullcrap. If someone is loose on the street, there is no way of keeping them from getting or making a gun. As far as that goes, a club or a chain is bloody effective, too, especially if there are a dozen or so guys swinging them at you. My dear cousin, Kathy, was murdered by a convicted felon who used a brick from her garden to crush her skull. Kathy didn’t believe in packing a gun, and now the world must go on without her. I miss her something awful.

Since we can’t keep people from arming themselves and hurting others, why do we posture and pretend that we can? If they can’t be trusted with weapons, why are they loose, in the first place? If they can’t be trusted with weapons, keep ‘em in jail or euthanize ‘em. If we’re going to turn ‘em loose, then we should have the nerve to let ‘em be fully human, and if they screw up again, it’s the noose, for sure. The problem isn’t with the availability of guns to criminals. The problem is the presence among us of violent criminals, running amok and without fear.

I have no problem with a pacifist. I have no use for the silly dip, either. But I really, REALLY have a problem with the pacifist who wants to force is lunacy down my throat, and leave my daughters bare before the ravisher. A man who won’t fight for what’s right is, in the words of John Paul Jones, “…a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser in the bunk in which he sleeps.” We’re back to differences and opposites, again. The pacifist says there is no difference between good and evil, and that good has a right to exist only so long as evil will allow it. That, in my opinion, equals a win for evil. Anyone who does not hate evil and fight against it is an ally of evil. There is one exception: anyone who has covenanted with God that he will not take up arms against his fellow man is excluded from this condemnation, but only so long as that man humbly acknowledges that his mortal life is owed to those who defend it for him.

I’ve heard this quote attributed to everyone from Thomas Jefferson to George Orwell, but I love it: “We sleep peacefully in our beds because rough men stand ready to visit violence upon those who mean us harm.” Heinlein had it right in “Beyond This Horizon.” A person has every right to wear a peace brassard, but he must consider himself a second-class citizen, taking his place behind those whose being armed ensure his right to survive the consequences of his decision.

The nature of Man

2010-01-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

This is my first entry here in a few months. It’s been pretty crazy. On 2 Jan., my eldest daughter – that is, my wife’s eldest daughter – Sara, was married. The 6 weeks preceding that were not exactly life in the fast lane. They were more like playing on the freeway. Sara did well, though; I think Brennan will be a good and loving husband.

Tonight, though, I’m in a foul, black mood. Just right for a little philosophy.

Philosophy is the most crucial subject to Mankind. It answers the question, “How should I live.” Not much is more elemental or crucial than that. That’s why the intellectuals have worked so hard at making philosophy sound stupid, abstract, inaccessible, and utterly irrelevant. It has been the goal of the academic class for more than 100 years to drive the rest of us under the dirt.

Philosophy is not stupid, abstract, inaccessible, or utterly irrelevant. It’s pretty simple, really. How should we live? Well, what kind of creatures are we? I’m going to answer that from two perspectives, and one or both of them will piss off just about everybody. Tough.

First perspective: Man was created by a just and loving God. He was created with a rational mind, capable of sensing his surroundings, analyzing the information from his senses, and making decisions based on that information. God allowed evil to exist in Man’s world so that Man would have something to choose. There must be opposition in all things, else how should we know one thing from another? Without sickness, how would we know health? Or happiness without sadness? Or love without hate? Or good without evil? Or liberty without Pelosi?

The existence of evil does not repudiate the existence of God; it validates His genius and His love for us, his children. He didn’t have to allow evil to exist. His own life would be cleaner and simpler without it, but without it, His children could never know the difference between good and evil, and could therefore never rise to the heights of exaltation by choosing the right. We could never become more than mindless puppets, which is precisely what Satan would have made us. His plan for us was that we would not have choice; he’d give us the answers and we’d take ‘em.

The purest essence of Man is his rational faculty. It is this that makes him different from other animals. Rationality must be free and unfettered in order to work. That is, we must have free access to our surroundings in order to know what our choices are. We must have the freedom to decide the best course of action – or what seems to us the best course of action – and learn from our mistakes. (There’s that opposition, again; we can’t learn from our mistakes unless there exist both failure and success.) The intellectual freedom to see, think, and decide is all fine and dandy, but without the freedom to actually act on our decisions, it’s not worth boiled piss. (Or as my cousin, Cactus Jack Garner, said of the vice presidency of the US: “This job isn’t worth a cup of warm spit.”)

If you interfere with Man’s rationality at any point, from sensory perception to concept formation to value judgment to decision to action, you have interfered with his essential humanity. You have forced him to live as some creature other than Man. If you made a horse live in a tree, you’d be forcing him to live as a squirrel. He wouldn’t be too happy or successful that way.

Traditionally, we have been given a choice of two forms of dehumanization – a false dichotomy. One side, commonly but erroneously identified as conservatives, wants to control us intellectually. Good ol’ Pat Robertson is an example of this kind of idiot. He once said on his television show that the spate of bad weather and geological disasters we were suffering at the time was the Earth trying to vomit the evil of Mankind off its surface, and the only way we could save ourselves was to destroy all atheists, homosexuals, and communists. And when he said “destroy,” he wasn’t talking about character assassination. This is intellectual despotism. Destroy anyone who doesn’t think like we do.

The other side of that false dichotomy is commonly but erroneously identified as liberals. These idiots want physical controls, often manifested primarily as economic controls. Pelosi and Reid don’t give a rip what we think, they just want our money. They want to control every aspect of our lives – where we live, what we eat, what we wear, who we marry, how many kids we have…. You name it, they have a program for it.

Ayn Rand called this the dichotomy of Attila and the Witch Doctor. Yes, a Mormon can quote Rand without his computer being struck by lightning. Rand said – and I’ll have to paraphrase here – that one is concerned with man’s belly, the other with his soul, but they are united in hatred of his mind. Man needs both the rational use of his mind and the physical use of his body to carry out the decisions of that mind. Rand said, “A mind without a body is a ghost, and a body without a mind is a corpse. Both are symbols of death.” Death, indeed, is what we serve when we fall for the premise that we must choose between two forms of slavery.

The Witch Doctor was her term for all religious people because, in spite of her overwhelming genius, she had fallen prey to this false dichotomy, herself. She looked at the ideas of people like Robertson and mistook them for the Gospel. However, in most respects, she was right, because there are a heck of a lot of Bible-thumping tyrants out there, just a’foamin’ at the mouth to get inside our heads and control us from within. I believe the proper phrase is, “…inwardly they are ravening wolves.”

Attila the Hun was her term for the Progressives and Liberals, who don’t give a rip about what we’re thinking or about right and wrong. They want control. They want to have a monopoly on force, which is why they are so rabid in their hatred of our being armed. There are people of this stripe in both major parties today, and on both ends of the political spectrum. There are even people called Muslims, who have come up with some preposterous mixture of Attila and the Witch Doctor. They want to control us intellectually by blowing us to hell.

There are two ways of depriving Man of the use of the engine of his mind: by running sewage through the fuel lines, or by jacking up the body so the drive wheels can’t get traction, no matter how furiously they spin.

So the first answer to the question, “How should I live,” is this: you ought to live free because that’s the way your God intended you to live.

Okay. Now that I’ve infuriated my atheist friends, let’s look at the question from the humanist, or Darwinist side. (Talk about a guy who has taken it in the shorts from history! Poor ol’ Charlie has been twisted into more knots than an Imam’s drawers in a Victoria’s Secret store!)

In the beginning, there wasn’t the word; there was just an animal that became Man. Now I don’t know if he was once a monkey, or whatever, and it doesn’t matter at this point. We are going to assume that Man was not made by God, but by himself, in response to his surroundings, and then he made God in his own image. I think that’s the way the old chestnut goes.

Man was an animal that lived in his own body, not like a sponge or bacterium. He was independent of his fellows, walking around, doing his own thing. His actions were controlled by his nervous system, which included sense organs that told him what he was seeing, smelling, feeling, hearing, and tasting. As he grew and learned, he gradually started to use sounds to stand for the things around him. As his knack for gab developed, so did his ability to deal with the world on a conceptual level. Each man organized his ideas according to what worked for him. One fellow might have put a table into the “flat things” class. His friend, from a posh, east-side cave, might have put a table into class of “things that go at the end of the sofa.”

Man learned to differentiate the differences between things and to integrate the similarities. Everything that exists must exist as something – it must have an identity that makes it distinguishable from everything else. Identity is synonymous to existence. Man’s means of doing these truly astonishing things was by the free exercise of his rational mind. (It is interesting to me that the atheists and humanists who posit that no loving God could allow evil to exist in the world never hesitate to posit with equal fervor the indispensable fact that in nature, there are differences, or opposites, and that Man learned the value of good by experiencing evil. It would seem that what is preposterous to God is perfectly reasonable for Nature.)

I’m sure that before there was a whole lot of theorizing, there was a lot of experimentation, but whatever the exact developmental flow, it happened, and it happened because there were no political parties to mess with Man’s mind or his use of it. If a neighbor tried to interfere with the process, he’d get a fractured skull, and that was the end of that crap.

Man became the animal that was capable of and lived by rationality. He wasn’t as strong or as fast as a saber-toothed cat, but he was a cagey sucker. He could make spears and deadfalls and punji pits that gave ol’ Tom fits and leveled the playing field. It was by his mind, not by his brute strength that Man survived. Note that having an idea for a spear won’t get you squat in this kind of situation. You must also have a stick, and the freedom of movement to go get it, sharpen it, and harden it in the fire. Undoubtedly, your neighbor, Oog Robertson, howled about the idea to make a spear being witchcraft, and your other neighbor, Mog Pelosi, wailed about the rights of the tiger. You said, “Screw you both,” and flaunted your new tiger skin coat that only had 42 spear holes in it.

One thing led to another, and we arrive at a character called Bill Gates. In order to live as a human being, Bill must have the intellectual freedom to think for himself, and the physical freedom to act on his thoughts. He’s no different in this respect than his ancestor with the perforated coat, except his spear would be called a “lawyer,” and his coat wouldn’t have holes in it.

So in the end, both models bring us to the same conclusion: that Man must be free to live as man. Whether he was created by God or shaped by his surroundings, the conclusion is the same: he must be free. Anything that prevents him from living as a man is essentially a form of murder. The man is slain, and his place taken by some grunting beast. By the same token, any man who chooses to pervert his rationality chooses suicide, and any man who denies his neighbors’ right to think and act rationally commits murder. Men are free. If they ain’t free, they ain’t men.

Jefferson's Declaration

2009-11-20T10:47:00.000-08:00

copied with gratitude from: http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm

In my opinion, which, at least for now, is still legal, this is one of the finest accomplishments of the Human mind.

Rebsarge

**************************************************

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

The Continuum, pt. 2

2009-11-08T21:36:00.000-08:00

There is a continuum, or a line, in human politics. At one extreme is absolute tyranny – the absolute subjugation of the individual by the state. Popular myth has it that at the opposite extreme is anarchy – the total absence of law or control of any type. Total freedom is bad because folks could do anything to anyone, and nothing could stop them. After all, absolute freedom means the freedom rape and kill, right? Total freedom is anarchy, right? The law of the claw and fang – survival of the baddest, right?

Hogwash. Drivel. Intellectual bulls***. This myth is a product of those who would enslave us. A bloody clever thing, too, aimed at getting us to eagerly put the shackles on our own ankles.

Freedom is generally defined as the absence of control, or some variation on the theme. That part is almost correct. It is the absence of external control, but it is not the absence of consequence.

Action might be defined as that which produces consequences or results. Certain actions, such as dropping something, have physical consequences. Physics and chemistry have their own sets of consequences, all or most of which are predictable to a high degree. It is when we introduce the volition of Man that things get a bit abstract. H. Sapiens can choose how to react to the actions of others. When people became sufficiently house broken to establish laws, the idea of institutionalized consequences came into being.

The law was never meant to keep people from doing things. In its purest form, it does not interfere with our agency. Rather, the law is meant to assess negative consequences that overshadow any positive, or pleasurable consequences that might come from an action. Strangling some silly jackass might be enjoyable, but it is bound to get you talked about in circles in which you’d rather not be discussed. Or, as a bumper sticker quite aptly observes, some people are alive only because it’s against the law to kill them.

This is a crucial point: the law is not meant to stop anyone from doing anything. When the over-civilized professor says we don’t need guns because the law will protect us, he’s missing the point. The law can’t keep anyone from doing anything, and it was never meant to. It was meant to say, “You do whatever you think is right, Bucko, but we’re gonna be right up your kilt if you cross this line.” If Bucko thinks it’s right to rob someone, he’s going to do it. The law might come along afterward and take all the fun out of it for him, but it’s going to happen. Unless, of course, the victim happens to have a shooting iron handy. Unlike the law, a .45 can stop a criminal act, but that’s a different essay.

At the anti-tyranny extreme of the continuum, there is freedom. It is freedom for all people. That means you can do whatever you want, unless it keeps your neighbor from doing what he wants, because he’s free too. How can the term “freedom” apply to a situation where one person might be coerced, assaulted, or forced into anything by another person? For animals, freedom might be defined as utter, savage anarchy, but we aren’t talking about animals.

We’re talking about human beings. Human beings have the capacity to make value judgments – to weigh alternatives – to exercise self-control – to do what they believe to be right, rather than submit to the promptings of XYZ gland.

At the freedom end of the continuum, everyone is free to think, to learn, to decide, and to act on those decisions, but they are not free from the consequences of their actions! If a free man decides to rape a free woman, and she doesn’t let daylight through him, the law still has authority to step in and levy consequences. Likewise, if a free woman has an idea, and turns it into a successful business, and pours labor into it for years, and finally starts turning an astonishing profit, she is free to do so. She is also free to keep the wealth generated, and do with it as she pleases. If she thinks it’s right to help the poor, or support a starving artist, or to help buy a stealth bomber to “…teach a little schooling to a native army corps,” well, she’s free to do any of those.

There can be no such thing as the freedom to enslave. What an obscene idea! Such idiocy could only be produced by that type of brain damage associated with extended exposure to professors. Who else could say that freedom means the power to destroy freedom? Who else could define freedom as the state of being a kept lapdog of the welfare state, whether on a reservation or in the French Quarter?

No, freedom is not slavery, and never was. It is not slavery to the state, nor to a gang, nor to that nebulous, amorphous “society,” nor to any man nor woman. It is not freedom from the consequences of our actions, be they acts of the savage latent in H. Sapiens, or acts of the most sublime nobility and grace, also latent in H. Sapiens. Freedom is the freedom to act, and to win or lose.

Now after saying all that, and struggling for the right words, I find in my inbox an excerpt from Ayn Rand sent to me by my brother. The feisty Russian battleaxe nailed it, as usual. I can’t top this… and “battleaxe” is a term of endearment and respect.

"It is obvious what the fraudulent issue of fascism versus communism accomplishes: it sets up, as opposites, two variants of the same political system; it eliminates the possibility of considering capitalism; it switches the choice of 'Freedom or dictatorship?' into 'Which kind of dictatorship?' -- thus establishing dictatorship as an inevitable fact and offering only a choice of rulers. The choice -- according to the proponents of that fraud -- is: a dictatorship of the rich (fascism) or a dictatorship of the poor (communism). That fraud collapsed in the 1940's, in the aftermath of World War II. It is too obvious, too easily demonstrable that fascism and communism are not two opposites, but two rival gangs fighting over the same territory -- that both are variants of statism, based on the collectivist principle that man is the rightless slave of the state -- that both are socialistic, in theory, in practice, and in the explicit statements of their leaders -- that under both systems, the poor are enslaved and the rich are expropriated in favor of a ruling clique -- that fascism is not the product of the political 'right,' but of the 'left' -- that the basic issue is not 'rich versus poor,' but man versus the state, or: individual rights versus totalitarian government -- which means: capitalism versus socialism." - philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand (1905-1982)

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge
Rebsarge.blogspot.com

The Continuum, pt. 1

2009-11-08T21:26:00.001-08:00

First, let’s iron out some terminology. There are people in this country whom I consider mortal enemies of myself and those who think like I do. Such mortal enmity – and I use the term “mortal” deliberately because it will, if left unchecked, lead to murder – must be addressed at the highest possible level of thinking and expression. Not to say that my thinking and expression are the highest level attainable, rather that this will be the highest level of which I’m capable. Words mean things. Words control how we think and how we organize things in our heads. (I was using the phrase “words mean things” 20 years before Rush used it, and I got it from Leonard Piekoff.)

A political science class I took at UNM several years ago (early 80’s) attempted to find effective labels for the different political ideas. The textbook posited that liberals wanted change and conservatives wanted the status quo. That won’t work, though, because it doesn’t take into account the situation in which they exist. If they live in liberty, this theory says the liberal wants to move away from it and the conservative wants to remain in it. On the other hand, if they live in tyranny, the liberal wants to move away and the conservative wants to stay.. This simple contradiction makes the theory unusable. The liberal of one generation would be the conservative of the next.

When I brought that up, the professor said that maybe liberals want very rapid change, and conservatives want slower change. Well, that didn’t do anything for me, either, because it left unanswered the same question – what sort of change do they want? At this point, he dropped the subject of change and said that liberals wanted less government and conservatives wanted more, to which I blew a big raspberry, as even back in those days, people calling themselves conservatives were howling for smaller and less government, and people calling themselves liberals were regulating everything under the sun.

Okay, he said, liberals are on the left and conservatives are on the right.

Huh, said I. What the hell does that mean? He said people on the left want less government and more freedom, and people on the right want more government and less freedom. I couldn’t believe this clown was a tenured professor and couldn’t see the hole in his arguments. He couldn’t define liberal in any meaningful way, so he substituted the term left for liberal, and used the same lame non-definition, and got huffy when I shot it to pieces.

During all this, the class was chiming in occasionally. I heard that conservatives were old and liberals were young, that conservatives were for the rich and liberals were for the poor. The guy with the shaved head said conservatives were Christians and liberals were Jews. I heard that liberals were for socialism and conservatives were for dictatorship. I mentioned the national socialists, but not one person in the class recognized the Nazi party by that name.

At this point, I started working on finding definitions of political thought that would hold enough water for me to work with them. It was years before I did. A former US Congressman from Ohio, Bob McKewen, nailed it. I saw Bob speak on stage in Salt Lake City in the mid-90’s. I sure hope he doesn’t mind my using his idea, but it is the only thing that has ever made sense to me. In the spring of 2009, I saw Glenn Beck develop the same model on his TV show, but he didn’t credit Bob. Maybe Glenn came up with it on his own. After all, when you look at it, it’s bloody obvious!

In the whole history of human politics, there have been but two major ideas. First is the idea that people ought to be free to do whatever they want. Second is the idea that someone else ought to control them, and they should be allowed to do only what their masters command. At the extreme of the second idea we find total, absolute despotism. Most people will tell you that at the extreme of the first idea, we find total anarchy, but that is not correct. I’ll get into that, but for now, I’ll use the fact that there are two extremes. There is a continuum between these two extremes, and all political philosophy exists somewhere on that continuum. If we think in terms of liberty or tyranny, it eliminates pointless argument and semantic hairsplitting. For the purposes of this essay, I’ll call people on the tyranny end “statists,” because they believe in the ultimate power and rectitude of the state. (And no, I don’t mean New Mexico, Texas, Vermont, etc..) People on the other end will be called “individualists,” because they believe in the right of the individual to be free.

When I say I detest Democrats, liberals, and the new left, most people assume that I must love Republicans, conservatives, and the right. Nothing could be further from the truth. I hate the former is because they are ‘way down toward the tyranny end of the line. I hate most of the latter for the same reason. For example, in the recent presidential campaign, you couldn’t spit on the difference between John McCain and Barack Obama. Obama started off bragging about how he was going to gut American liberty, and McCain, rather than offering a different principle, offered a different level of gutting.

So where does most political debate in the world occur? On the statist side of center. If you started at the statist end of the line and walked toward center, the first people you’d see might be the Mullahs in the despotic theocracies of Africa and the Middle East. Then you’d encounter the two-bit punks and bullies like Idi Amin and Papa Doc Devaulier. Then you’d hit Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, the Bolsheviks, Chicoms, and Soviets, all clustered together, and right after that, snuggled up against them, you’d find the likes of Barack Obama and Lincoln. (Though if blood shed in pursuit of tyranny were a qualifer, you’d have to put Lincoln on the statist side of any other American.) A few steps more and you’d be all over John McCain, and a few steps further you’d find the Bushes, John Kennedy, and sundry American personalities. Ronald Reagan would be one of the last you’d see, but when you walked out of that crowd, you’d have a clear and unpopulated view of the center of the continuum, still a long way ahead of you.

There hasn’t been a real freedom-loving and –respecting leader in the White House in many, many years. Reagan was the closest, but if you look closely at his philosophy, he didn’t advocate freedom for the sake of the individual human being; he advocated freedom because it would allow more people to make more money and thereby pay more taxes, to enable more government programs. This is basically the position of American slavery apologists – that slavery was made moral because humanely-treated slaves would produce more, so the masters would take good care of their slaves out of self-interest. And even so, Reagan was much further from tyranny than his Republican descendants.

The current crop of Democrats are more statist than any elected officials in American history, including the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The current crop of Republicans is about one short spit away from them. A few, like Tancredo and Romney may be a little further, but I have never heard a Republican refute statism by saying human beings ought to live free.

So, instead of saying I detest Democrats or liberals, I say I detest statists. That not only allows me to conceptually combine big government-loving Republicans with their Democrat soul mates, it also answers those who assume that because I detest Obama I must love McCain. I’ve met perhaps a half-dozen people who knew what a statist is, so the term is guaranteed to start conversation, which is a good thing. Several people to whom I’ve explained this model have been delighted to have found a way to express what they believe. They’d been stuck for so long in the position of letting the statists and their lapdog media define the terms of the debate they didn’t realize anything else was possible. It breaks my heart to hear reasonably intelligent people say they don’t care about politics because there’s no difference between the two sides – as if we were forever and unalterably stuck with the present situation, which isn’t two sides, at all!

We have been offered a false choice – between tyranny of the Democrats or tyranny of the Republicans. The two parties have cast themselves as opposites, which is patently absurd. If one end of the continuum is absolute dictatorship, what is the other end? The popular answer is that it is anarchy. After all if dictatorship is too much government, the opposite ought to be no government, at all, right?

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Rebsarge
Rebsarge.blogspot.com

Ice cream and manure

2009-11-08T00:32:00.000-08:00

Compromise is like mixing ice cream and manure. It doesn’t help the manure, and it ruins the ice cream.

It is demanded that we compromise with the fascists. “Reach across the aisle,” is the term. Don’t cling to your values so fanatically. Give up a little of your cherished freedom, so we can have a little of our cherished tyranny. That’s it. You give up some of your freedom so we can have some of our tyranny.

First of all, compromise isn’t some warm and fuzzy method of getting along with people. It’s a model for selling your soul. Supposedly, we are told, in compromise, everyone is happy with the outcome, because everyone gets something they want. It enables us all to move forward, together. Bull.

Take a bucket of manure and add a teaspoon of ice cream. What have you got? A bucket of manure. Now take a bucket of ice cream and add a tablespoon of manure. What have you got now? You still have a bucket of manure. How does that become, “…everyone gets something they want?”

Compromise is not a process of examining alternatives to find what’s best. That’s called – are you ready for this – decision making. I have ideas. You have ideas. We hammer it out and decide which is the best course. The operative concept here is best. It’s not part of mine and part of yours. It’s what’s best. It may well be all mine or all yours – or neither. Maybe we’ll realize we’re both wrong and settle on something entirely different. Decision making works when people are working toward the same objective. Two or more people with the same objective can hash things out and come up with a course that’s best. It has nothing whatsoever to do with compromise.

Actually, compromise can work in a similar setting, but only with small groups or couples. As long as everyone involved is pursuing the same objective, compromise can be survivable, and even practical. We’ll do some things your way, Dear, and some things mine, and maybe next time we’ll trade off. Okay? Great. Let’s get on with life as married folks.

Where compromise is never survivable or even moral is when the parties involved have different objectives. Let’s say one person wants to preserve a constitutional government and a free republic. Let’s say the other wants to strike down the constitution and establish a fascist dictatorship. How preposterous is it to say we’ll do some things your way, and some mine? We’ll have fascism this year, then you voluntarily step down and we’ll have a republic for a year. Or maybe, we’ll have fascism on the even days, and a republic on the odd. Or maybe we’ll have fascism in the states that start with letters A through M, and…. This is the soul of compromise.

Remember when Bill Clinton said that American were going to have to give up some of their cherished liberties in order to be safe from gun crime? He really said that, and in the most patronizing, snotty way – “…their cherished liberties…”

We cannot compromise with evil. We cannot compromise with poison. We cannot compromise away things which can never, ever be regained. We cannot compromise on moral principles, because once lost, we will have become them – those who demand that we give up some good to make room for their evil.

We will be called extremists. Let’s look at that. There are two parameters to our political premises: the extremity of the position, itself, and the strength with which we cling to it. For example, one might hold an extreme position on global warming and advocate pulling the plug on all power generation on earth, but lack the commitment necessary to volunteer to be the first to freeze to death. On the other hand, one might hold a much less extreme position, such as reducing auto emissions over the next ten years, and be absolutely unshakable in one’s commitment, accepting no compromise, whatsoever.

In most cases, moderation is the same as compromise. Moderation means not extreme in your positions or your commitment. It’s okay to be pro-liberty, as long as you’ll accept tyranny to a certain extent. It’s okay to be pro-life, as long as you’ll accept murder to a certain extent. It’s okay to be for liberty, as long as you’ll accept chattel slavery to a certain extent.

We are told that with moderation or compromise, everybody wins. Horse hockey. If I’m totally evil and you are totally right, and we compromise, who wins? Does Good win by giving Evil something it couldn’t get on its own? Hell, no. Evil wins. No matter how small or insignificant the compromise, Evil wins. As Rand said, “In any compromise between food and poison, only death can win.”

When someone calls you an extremist, it means he can’t refute your position, so he’s going to condemn you for not accepting his at face value, in spite of the fact that he can’t defend it, himself. It means you got ‘im, and he can’t answer you. Have you ever had someone tell you, “You are 100% right, you extremist SOB?” When people agree with you, they don’t give a rip how extreme your view might be. (Hear that, Hannity? Stop condemning our enemies as extremists. We’d better get to be as extreme as they are, or we’re dead meat!)

Barry Goldwater, who is not quoted nearly enough nowadays, said, “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” [1]

A moderate is a person who lacks the integrity or guts to stand up for something and say, “I’m for this, and if you don’t like it, uncase your colors and start the ball.” A moderate would rather give the victory to evil than to stand accused of being steadfast or confident.

Here is William Lloyd Garrison, an antebellum abolitionist. Quite the madman of his time, by all accounts. But read this and absorb the fire from it. Ponder his metaphors. Apply his commitment to our present situation, and see if our history does not teach us the truth.

“I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; -- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD.” [2]

Let us not be moderate. Let us be extremists. Let us be the uncompromising SOB’s they fear with all their miserable, lying, dungheap souls. Let us never give them an inch for which they haven’t fought and suffered and bled.

There is no moderation in shackles. There is no compromise in the bullet marks in the firing squad’s wall. There is no give and take in the noose, or the guillotine, or the gas chamber, or the Makarov slug. There is a point in the process of compromise and moderation when all that has gone before – all the mealy-mouthing and crawfishing and point dancing and semantic slight-of-hand – ends, and the only sound to be heard is the wailing of the widows and orphans, and the wind whistling through the broken windows in desolated factories where free men and women once forged the foundation of the greatest republic on earth.

Sic Semper Tyrannis Rebsarge

[1] Goldwater’s speech accepting the Republican nomination for the presidency – http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barrygoldwater1964rnc.htm

[2] Garrison’s article from the inaugural edition of “The Liberator” - http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Liberator.html

More reason to throw the bums out.

2009-11-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

Check out this old video: http://d.yimg.com/kq/groups/17260182/1610997888/name/ftc-vi26.wmv

This video is very interesting. I'd seen it before, but had forgotten about it until I got from Uncle George a few days ago. It does not, as the text implies, refer to anything Obama's government is doing. If you look at the ticker along the bottom, it was made when oil had reach an all-time high of $3-something, which dates it about two years ago. The issues it mentions, like the DREAM act and others, have been shelved for a while, although there's no doubt they are still very much a part of the liberal/fascist dream.

The video talks about some really terrible, stupid, destructive legislation. My vocabulary - even my sergeant vocabulary - is utterly inadequate to describe how awful this stuff is. Good ol' Lou did a great job in bringing it out, too!

But here's the crucial point for us today: this stuff was the product of a government at least partially controlled by Republicans! GW was in the White House, and he never spoke up against it. The entire legislature, including John McCain, were totally sold out to it. Even after the American people reared up on their hind legs and raised enough hell to make them drop it for the time, none of them, including Republicans, ever denounced it or repented of their effort to pass it. Many of those Republicans are still in office.

How can we ever hope to alter our nation's drift toward fascism if we allow men and women like that to remain in office? Their capacity to do us harm is limited only by the Democrat's unwillingness to let them into the circle of power. That sounds crazy, doesn't it? That we are blessed by the fact that the Democrats are such narrow-minded cretins they can't recognize the enormous power resting within their reach. If they could break down their own bigotry enough to work with the Republicans who tried to jam this sewage down our throats, there is no way the Constitution could stand up to them. We'd be lost, and all our children's children would wonder if the legends of liberty were just urban myth.

We need to clean house, completely. We need to vote out every incumbent in the government, from the White House to the dog catcher. Those who make up "the government" must be made to know that, first, they work for us, and second, that we can and will put their sorry backsides on the streets! The only way to tame the beast of fascism that thrives in the guts of our government is with a draconian, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling sweep.

Yes, we'll probably throw out a few good ones, and I know there are a few good ones. But it's like a gangrenous leg; you have to take some healthy tissue to save the life of the body. If they are good, we can let them back in. They'll come back to a government that has been cleansed and reshaped and redefined in the model of our constitution, and won't that be a happy day!

Democrats and Republicans can work together on this. It can cross all ideological lines. It will define those who are irreversably our enemies, because they will fight against this. It's not a bad thing to know who your enemies are. The moment we start thinking, "But he's one of ours," this effort is doomed. We have to look our Democrat friends in the eye and say, "You get rid of all yours, and I''ll get rid of all mine." It won't matter if we put more Democrats back in there. I'm not talking about changing the demographic makeup of the government, though that would be pretty sweet! I'm talking about giving everyone in the government such a terrific slap up 'side the head they'll never forget it.

That last point bears emphasizing and repeating. It's okay if we replace Democrat with Democrat and Republican with Republican. The objective is to clear out the entire edifice of government so that whoever or whatever fills the void will have a very fresh, clear vision of an electoral massacre of shattering proportions. They will know who the boss is.

Personally, I could live with a Democratic legislator or bureaucrat who knows his place in the world. It would be a lot easier than living with a Republican in the same office who looks down his nose at me and believes in his heart of hearts that he has been sent to control all aspects of my life.

Watch this video, but don't let it make you rail against the Obama government, because this bill wasn't one of theirs. It was the product and the pet of many who are in the government now, and are telling us they are our friends, and that they stand for us because of that little "R" by their names in the paper. Let's get rid of 'em. Every last, stinkin', lyin', depraved one of 'em.

If you think this has merit, pass it along.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
rebsarge
rebsarge.blogspot.com

They're all Demopublicans

2009-11-06T12:30:00.000-08:00

(I deleted it before getting it copied here, but on 5 Nov, I got a 5-line reply from the RNC that said, “Thank you for playing. Better luck next time.”)

To the RNC, 23 Oct., 09

I have been registered as a Republican since the early '70's, when I started voting. That is about to end. I am very near the point of renouncing my membership in the GOP and registering as an independent, even though that will keep me from voting in primary elections in New Mexico.

"... a decent respect for the opinions of Mankind..." Oh, wait. You have forgotten the man who wrote that, or what the words meant, or what the document meant.

The GOP has become a mockery of what it was supposed to be. It no longer stands for individual liberty, for capitalism, for decency or liberty or peace through strength. It has taken a stand against all those things. It has put up candidates like John McCain, who was such a fascist collaborator that if he'd been in Italy in 1944, he'd have been paraded naked through the streets of Rome. John McCain is the one man most responsible for Barack Obama being in the White House. Had McCain run a campaign based on the principles of individual liberty, he'd have been swept into office like no other candidate in history. As it was, we were faced with the choice of Obama or Obama Lite. I spit on John McCain. As for his military record, remember that Adolph Hitler had an Iron Cross from WWI, and they didn't give those things out like candy!

Since the election, you have virtually shunned and castigated Sara Palin, who, though less than perfect as a candidate, excited and moved conservatives in America more than anyone since Ronald Reagan. And a lot of the people who were raving the praises of Sara Palin didn't particularly care of Ronald Regan because he was anything BUT a free-market capitalist. In so doing, you have explicitly said you want to truck with the likes of me, a Marine veteran, working man, good father, deeply Christian, committed to liberty and the rights of the individual human being.

In short, the Republican National Committee has consistently done everything in its power to turn its back on those of us who love our liberty, our country, the quality of life we have been given by free men and women... in short, the Republican Party has come to stand for all I hold despicable in politics, not by being different from the Democrats, but by being identical to them.

I don't want your apologist, middle-of-the-road, compromise-with-the-devil, gutless, bedwetting candidates. I want someone who will stand up to these unrepentant fascist sonsofbitches running this country and say, "That's enough, you fascists sonsofbitches!"

The only thing we should be "reaching across the aisle" with is a right fist swung from the hip pockets - or a bayonet.

I'd like to know what the leadership of the party has to say about this letter. I'd like to know if anyone up there has the guts to reply to it.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
rebsarge
rebsarge.blogspot.com

GAY MARRIAGE, HYPOCRISY, AND THE SOURCE OF MORALITY

2009-10-31T00:45:00.000-07:00

Homosexuality is not a crime, and I don’t think it should be punished by law. I don’t hate or even dislike homosexuals. There’s no question that I have many more homosexual friends than I am aware of. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about a person’s sexual proclivities. I very much give a damn about their character and their willingness to say they don’t give a damn about my sexual proclivities, and I’m not seeing much of that nowadays!

My personal belief is that homosexuality is not a genetic predisposition. It is counter evolutionary and counter survival for the species. I’m too much of a Darwinist to believe otherwise. As for the scientific evidence to the contrary… well, we’ve seen science be wrong, and we’ve seen it twisted and used for political purposes, haven’t we? Homosexuality fails the determinism test both spiritually and evolutionarily. Evolution would not tolerate a trait that is anti-reproduc- tion. A just and loving God would not create a whole class of people just so He could kick them around – although He will allow them to make all the bad decisions they wish. (Yes, genetically linked things like diabetes or heart disease are a fact, but it is only our technology that has allowed folks with these traits to live long enough to reproduce them. There is no technological sustenance for homosexuality.)

I do not think same-sex marriage as an extension of the state is a good idea. Yes, it is a religion-based principle, and I do not apologize for that or back down from it. I think homosexuality is a sin, and sins are between the individual and God, and none of my business. But there is a point when that sin does become my business, and that is the point at which a government that I am forced to pay for is coerced – or leaps whole-heartedly - into legitimizing it.

Here’s a huge hypocrisy in the same-sex marriage argument. If I say, “God doesn’t want us to institutionalize same-sex marriage,” that’s an intrusion of religion into the law. But it’s not an intrusion when some jackass says, “Well, bleep you and your god and your standards and your law! We’re gonna do this to your government, with your money, and right in front of your bleeping children. And if you object, we’re gonna crucify you for trying to push your standards on us!”

The fact is that law is supposed to be based on moral principles, and short of totally banning and forbidding all religious thinking, there is no way to categorically prevent religious principles from impacting the law. Any such premise would be a form of thought control, anyway. It would be like the hate crimes laws – laws that punish not behavior, but motive – laws against what a person thinks, rather than against what they do. Is there anything more absurd or obscene that to say it’s worse to assault someone because you hate them than to do it just for the heck of it? Or how about the people who practically rioted against the Mormon Church after Prop 8 was defeated in California saying, in effect, “Everyone has the right to speak freely, even if they disagree with us, as long as their opinions have nothing to do with religion?”

It would be disingenuous for me to say I get all my moral principles from my religion because I had most of them before I got religion. But my religion backs them up and helps me stand by them with a sense of rectitude I never had before. So, because my moral standards are now religious, does that bar me from participating in the government? Am I only allowed to vote for principles that don’t agree with my religion? What kind of hellish, contradictory existence would that be?

Should I be able to prove my principles outside the context of my religion? Hell, yes! I think that’s a prerequisite for anybody who wishes to be fully self-aware. But when have we ever required anyone to prove their principles before they vote on ‘em? Are you prepared to live in a country where no one is allowed to participate in the government unless they can prove there is no religious content to their thinking?

Here’s something to consider: why is the government involved in marriage, at all? Why should heterosexual marriage be sanctioned by the state? If a couple is concerned about contract law, or community property, etc, let them make a domestic contract with the state as sponsor. On the other hand, if it’s a matter of being joined in the name of God, let them get married in a church. If a church will marry two men, or a man and a chicken, or two men and a chicken, that’s the church’s business, and I shouldn’t have to pay for it. I don’t think there should be any laws against marriage of any kind, because I don’t think the government should be involved in it, at all.

I don’t agree with marriage as a creature of the state, period. Now, we’re never going to sell that in this lifetime, so we have make a decision. Some don’t like paying taxes to a government that won’t marry gays. I don’t like paying taxes to a government that does marry gays. Somebody’s gonna feel screwed. (Actually, they’ll probably come up with enough stuff to make everybody feel screwed!) Shall we just put it to a vote? Sort of like it says in the Constitution? What fertile ground for a states’ rights movement!

While I don’t hate gays, I don’t want them proselytizing my kids, who have enough crap coming at them without that! I have worked in environments filled with predatory lesbians, and have seen families destroyed and lives irreparably damaged by their depredations. I hate that, and I won’t apologize for hating it, and I won’t back down.

I am really, really sick and tired of these people slamming their sexuality in our faces and demanding that we recognize it, praise it, teach our kids it’s okay – hell’s bells, that it’s preferable – that we are required to pay for their neuroses and trauma, that we’re monsters or Nazis if we try to teach our kids to be straight. How about this ... entity that Obama appointed to keep our schools safe saying that plays like “Romeo and Juliet” are malicious and harmful stereotypes that keep people from embracing homosexuality? Oh, that doesn’t piss me off too much! How is appointing someone like that to a job paid for by my taxes – and a job of tremendous power and authority over me and my kids – not every bit as hideous as forcing atheist cadets to march in an Infidel Flight? It’s the same double standard we’re seeing in everything else: opposing aggressive public homosexuality is a religious intrusion, but using the power of the law to make it the standard is enlightened and honorable. Horseshit! I stand against both sides of this false dichotomy because they are really the same thing.

And yes, I have the same reaction to people who teach my kids that promiscuity is preferable to chastity. Encouraging my daughters to be whores is just as bad as encouraging them to be dykes. To repeat – and to emphasize – I have nothing against homosexuals, and think they should have full rights and protection under the law. But… It’s hard enough to explain to my 9-year old daughter why some women suck penises in public bathrooms, when I’m at least allowed to tell her it’s wrong.

I bitterly resent the fact that I risk prosecution by the state for telling her it’s wrong for men suck penises in public bathrooms. I’m sick and tired of having the glories of homosexual fellatio shoved down my throat. (Choice of words not intentional, but I think I’ll let it stand.)

We are seeing the institutionalization of such despicable behavior in our government at all levels. Yes, Bush had some appointments that I detested, and so did Reagan, and it still sets my teeth on edge to hear people talk about Reagan being such a great capitalist and libertarian. But if it was wrong for them to do what they did in the semi-discrete manner in which they did it, how is it so wonderful for this current pack of looters to do it right in our faces, not giving a flying rat’s empennage about morals, ethics, liberty, free will, individualism, personal choice, or a single one of the principles I was brought up to cherish and defend?

Mad? You betcha.

The Institutionalization of Racism

2009-10-12T08:24:00.001-07:00

OBAMA AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION
OF RACISM

Barack Obama ran an explicitly racist campaign, and his presidency has done more to exacerbate racial tension and anger in the US than anything since Malcolm X’s “White devils” tirades.

I have seen racism, and have participated in it, and have a personal testimony of its hideousness. It is one of the worst, if not the very worst, of all human behaviors. It degrades and humiliates the victim, and desensitizes and trivializes the perpetrator.

Without going into all the gruesome details, I will simply say that I have felt the dehumanizing slap of racism across my face, and have felt the corrosive blistering of it burning in my own heart. It is terrible, and it is a very, very hard habit to break. Over the past 40 years, I have striven, with the help of many wonderful friends and teachers, to rid myself of this curse. I’m probably about 98% clean. It crops up once in a while, and always leaves me feeling filthy and ashamed. Each such occurrence provides an opportunity to get rid of one more little disgusting piece of the past.

One of the most powerful statements I’ve read is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream that someday his children will be judged, not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their characters. Amen, Brother King. I have the same dream for my own children. In my opinion, this is an excellent definition of racism: that people are judged by their skin color, rather than by their character.

Now comes Barack Obama. During his campaign, almost daily, he stated that he was uniquely suited for the job because of his skin color. He claimed special knowledge or insight because of his skin color. His being Black would make him a better president than his opponent, who wasn’t Black. He and his party pounded the race issue. If elected, he would be the First Black President. His wife said she was ashamed of her country for considering anything but race. Any criticism of him was laid to racism. Millions of his supporters said they’d vote for him only because of his race. The chant, “Yes we can,” long a Hispanic anthem in the form of “Si se puede,” was everywhere. Its prominence in the campaign linked Hispanics with Blacks against Whites. A large number of statist Whites said they would or did vote for Obama strictly because of his race.

Since his inauguration, there has been no letup in the torrent of racist invective and hubris. Every critic of him or his policies is accused of racism. To be anti-fascist is to be anti-black. To be pro-Constitution is to be anti-black. To resist destroying our children with debt is anti-black.

He appointed a woman to the Supreme Court in spite of – or perhaps because of – her statement that, being a Latina, she was wiser than any White judge. He has defended racists like Jeremiah Wright and Van Jones, even giving Jones unprecedented power over our nation as the so-called “green jobs czar.” He has chummed up to Hamas and Hezobolah, Iran, Hugo Chavez, and every two-bit racist madman to come down the pike. He has spat upon his own countrymen and our allies.

I hate to say it, but when I see a car driven by a Black person, and it has an Obama bumper sticker, I wonder, “Did this person vote for Obama because he was Black, or because he is a fascist? In spite of his character, or because of it?” I never felt this way before. What do Blacks think when they see me or hear me speaking against Obama? Do they think I’m a racist? If that was their sole motivation in voting for him, I don’t see how they could think otherwise. Since race was the only factor in their decision, anyone opposing them must have been an opposing racist.

There were surely people who voted against Obama out of racism, although not in the numbers the fascist press would like us to believe. Should I wonder if the White person with the McCain bumper sticker were racist or fascist? Interesting question. McCain didn’t really put up anything resembling a rebuttal or refutation of Obama’s racist, fascist campaign. In fact, he seemed intent on copying Obama and legitimizing him. John McCain is a fascist sympathizer, and if this nation were Italy or France in 1945, he’d have been shaved and paraded through the streets naked – if he weren’t lynched. (Yes, John McCain was a brave and dedicated warrior for America, but as a presidential candidate, he was and remains a disgrace, with his mealy-mouthed apologizing for liberty and the Constitution. Adolph Hitler had a terrific war record, too.)

Barack Obama is not an American president. He is most emphatically not a people’s president. He is a Black president, and a fascist one. He has driven a racial wedge between Blacks and Whites. He has made racism the coin of this realm, as institutionalized as it was in Nazi Germany. Those who voted for him because of his race essentially sold their souls, and the soul of an idea equality’s greatest spokesman pronounced in such superlative and thundering words 41 years ago.

And what did they sell it for? This? A two-bit megalomaniac on a spending binge with other people’s money? Barack Obama doesn’t even have the character to be a real tyrant. He’s a punk, and he’d be a punk regardless of his complexion.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Rebsarge

OUR ENEMIES ARE NOT MISTAKEN

2009-10-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

In America today there are those who think the Obama government is taking the US toward a fascist dictatorship, and they are really ticked off about it. I’m in this group.

Then there are those who seem to approve the Obama administration because they hated Bush, or because they believe the media bilge about moving toward a more egalitarian, humane, democratic republic.

The third group is the problem. They think the Obama government is not doing enough to take the US toward a fascist dictatorship, and they are really ticked off about it. They are vocal, politically savvy, and skilled at propaganda and sleight of hand, or misdirection. They are utterly implacable and will not submit to reason or argument. They must be defeated, hopefully by ballot.

We of the pro-liberty camp have a passion for arguing. We will engage anyone and pound them to rubble with fact after fact. We tend to have a relatively optimistic view of our countrymen; we believe they can be cured with enough facts. This is an altogether good and noble attitude, but it’s wasting time and resources at a horrendous rate.

The second group says, “An all-powerful national government is the best way to ensure the liberty and prosperity of the individual citizen.” They have looked at some set of information and drawn a conclusion that, though absurd to the rest of us, they hold with passion and commitment. These people are mistaken in their idea of to what ends certain policies and principles will lead, but might, with sufficient injection of fact, be cured.

Members of the third group, however, say, “Freedom is bad. Dictatorship is good. We love Barack Obama and his government because they are taking us away from that wretched Constitution and toward dictatorship.” Facts are probably not going to change these people’s minds– certainly not the same set of facts that may work for group two. These people are not mistaken about where their policies will lead. They know exactly where they are taking us. They looked at their values, developed a plan to achieve them, and are driving that plan right down our throats. They want fascism.

We have been trying to convince the fascists that their ideas will lead to fascism. They have been willing to let us spend ourselves in such fruitless pursuit, and have studiously continued to push their agenda to those in the second group. We’re getting our backsides kicked in this crucial theater.

We need to be carrying our arguments to the second group, not the third. That’s going to be tough to do because of the prejudice against capitalism and liberty that has been pounded into Americans from pre-school on up, and because of the staggering amount of propaganda and misinformation being pushed by the news and entertainment industries. That it will be difficult does not excuse us from the attempt.

I suggest that the place to start might be to ask every politician and bureaucrat who comes in range if they believe people ought to be free. Do they subscribe to the idea that individual liberty is a good thing? Do they believe that all people should have the right to do with their money as they see fit? To raise their kids as they see fit? To deal with whichever doctor they see fit? To listen to the talk show host of their choice? There is no end of things to ask about, because their policies will impact everything in our lives.

We must ask these questions in public, where others can hear the responses. If we ask our congressvermin, “Do you think your ideas will lead to tyranny,” they can argue or waffle or redirect. Most likely, they will step out of the zone in which we have initiated combat and try to bait us into engaging them in a space of their own choosing. They will try to get us to argue about some pointless, esoteric thing, knowing most Americans are unable to see the redirection for what it is. It is very, very hard to resist the bait, for they are the universal masters of bait and switch!

Their strongest tactical edge is that they understand their objective. Like Grant in the summer of ’64, they are not lured into the vainglory of “On to Richmond.” They never forget their mission: to destroy the enemy in the field. To destroy us, they must retain the second group. They do not care about converting or convincing us, and we must take the same approach to them. The victor will be the side that controls that second group.

We must be prepared for the response, which will be savage and instantaneous, and will come from all sides. If we ask our senator if he believes people ought to be able to profit from the sweat of their own brows, he will likely turn on us instantly. His objective is not to defend himself, but to sway group two. He might counter by asking something like, “Are you trying to say the Black people of America don’t deserve a break? What are you, some kind of a Klansman, or something?”

I honestly believe that if we do not face this fire, we will face an altogether different sort when we’re led to the wall.

So the point of this essay is this: It is pointless to tell the fascists that their policies will lead to fascism. We must concentrate on exposing their true agenda to the second group. One way to do this is to ask very direct questions in public. If you write letters, and get replies like the one I got from Mr. Bales, in Sen. Udall’s office, make them public. There are surely other ways, and I’d love to hear your ideas.

Be strong. Do not flinch from duty. As my Mom used to say, bow your neck, back your ears, and get after it.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Reb Sarge

Letter to Barry

2009-10-08T10:53:00.000-07:00

Thursday, 8 Oct., 2009

Mr. President, I would like to offer you the use of some of my friends. You don't seem to have any that are not sodomites, pedophiles, terrorists, mad dog racists, Bolsheviks, fascists, tax cheats, or other criminal vermin.

Actually I have a great many friends who are none of these things, nor of any other generally despicable bent, and would more than happy to introduce you to them.

All my love,
Reb Sarge

naked, smirking evil

2009-10-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

I sent the following letter to my Congressional delegation and President Obama on 17 August, 2009. I received the usual form swill from four of the five legislators, and nothing from Obama. Then, on 16 September, I got a real little gem from Michael Bales, on the staff of Senator Tom Udall, (D) NM

Let’s look at the letters. First is my letter to them.

I have a very serious question that occurred to me in the context of national health care, but I believe has far wider implications to the relationship between the American people and their government.

Could you please show me where in the Constitution the national government is given authority to send a man with a gun to take money from my neighbor, (and please do not be so disingenuous as to claim the IRS is not a lot of men with guns) give me a few pennies on the dollar of my neighbor’s money, and keep the rest to pay the wages of the guys with the guns.

I have searched the US Constitution over and over, but can’t find that. Could you please point out to me what I’m missing?

And Mr. Bales’ reply:

Dear Mr. Reb Sarge,

Thank you for contacting Senator Tom Udall with your question of where in the Constitution the Congress is given the power to levy and collect taxes.

The Senator asked that I contact you with the answer. The power to tax is delineated in Article I, Section 8, clause 1, of the Constitution which states:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States;

There is only one express exception to federal taxing power found in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9 provides “No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.” I hope this answers your question.

Michael Bales
Legislative Correspondent
Office of Senator Tom Udall

In my opinion, Bales’ letter expresses in crystalline terms what we can expect from the current government. It is my hope that by making this matter known to the public, we might awaken some who have been complacent or undecided, and galvanize some who have been overwhelmed by the assault on our liberty.

At first, I couldn’t believe that anyone could think this was a legitimate response to my question. I wrote to Bales, directly, and asked if he’d actually read my letter, or if Udall had just told him to quote from the Constitution. He replied on 21 September that he had, indeed, read my letter. It is my opinion that the attitude expressed by Mr. Bales is an exquisite illustration of what can be expected from this government, and why.

My question had nothing to do with taxation. It asked how the government could justify looting one person for the benefit of another, with a large cut of the loot going to the government. Bales says the authority “…To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States…” equates to the authority to loot the nation to support whatever purpose those in government choose. I decided to examine this, one phrase at a time to see if there is any legitimacy in Bales’ position, of it is simply a blatant perversion of the Founders’ intent.

In the present context of nationalization and redistribution of wealth, the questions on the table are the bailouts, subsidies for various industries, the stimulus program, and the nationalization of health care. There is also a war in the Middle East, the support of which has been a subject of much debate.

Only one of these issues deals with the common defense, and ironically, that is the only one upon which the government is reluctant to spend anything other than the blood of our sons. Equally ironically, the war is the only one that is supported by the majority of the people. Since the common defense does not seem to be a priority for our government, I think it is safe to say Bales did not mean to use it as justification for looting us.

The general welfare, by definition, includes everyone, as in “the welfare of people, in general,” so any doctrine that establishes a population of sacrificial sheep to be bled and sucked dry by the rest of the population can’t apply here. Can Bales possibly mean to say that IRS thugs constitute the general population? Perhaps he means that anyone who works for a living and tries to pay his own bills – or the children of such people -is not part of the general population. Could he be saying that the destruction of our freedom is in the best interests of our children?

As a matter of fact, he could, at that. The American Progressive has always been the enemy of liberty. When the Weimar Constitution gave the German government the authority to control every aspect of the lives of the German people, from reproductive matters to who worked at which jobs and lived in which cities, to what was published or broadcast in the news or entertainment media, to how much anyone earned or what foods they could buy, the American Progressives and liberals hailed the document as the finest piece of politics ever to come down the pike. They loved it. They supported and praised the German delegates who walked out of the convention because the constitution left too much power in the hands of the people.

The general welfare clause has been used for years by looters wishing to define themselves and their supporters as “general” and everyone else as sacrificial sheep. This particularly odious little argument is worthy of an article – or a book – in itself, and we don’t need to get into that rathole here. I will say here only that anything purporting to be for the “general” welfare, like “common” defense, must benefit the entire population, including children who will someday grow up to be blood drinkers or sheep. Therefore, the general welfare clause cannot justify the scenario in my original question.

The only remaining phrase that Bales might be using deals with the debts of the United States. Let’s look at that. The government is talking about taking responsibility for trillions of dollars in medical bills, bad loans, and autoworkers’ wages. It is promising to simply give away billions more to “stimulate the economy,” apparently under the premise that money spent by the government has some magic stimulating effect that is lacking in money spent by citizens. There’s no end to the debt. There’s more debt headed our way in the next few years than has been accrued in the history of the Republic. Can Bales seriously mean to say that the Constitution allows the creation of trillions of dollars in debt in the interest of paying off a few billion?

You know, he just might, at that. Bales is clearly part of that Progressive intelligentsia elite who think they are so much wiser than the rest of us, and are somehow endowed by their Creator with the authority to enslave us for their own purposes, according to their own values and to our own benefit.

And that, Brothers and Sisters, is what this is all about. It isn’t about health care, or bailouts, or stimulus plans. It’s about one group of people seizing the power of life and death over another group, not on the premise of self-defense or criminality, but out of arrogance and greed and lust for power. That’s it, pure and simple. This whole flap is about whether some people are so much smarter and better than the rest of us that we must be made to shut up and do as we are told… Oh, and pick up the tab, too, please.

Chief Justice John Marshal said, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Truer words have never been uttered. It is the belief of those presently in our government that the authority to tax is, literally, the authority to destroy any part of the population they wish – to destroy any aspect of our culture or our liberty that annoys them. They know it; they acknowledge and admit it; they glory and revel it in; they throw it in our faces.

One of Rand’s characters asked, “What is it hell is supposed to be? Naked, smirking evil?” Well, folks, here is naked, smirking evil. These people are committed to the destruction of our Republic, of our lives, of our prosperity forever. They believe they are empowered to do so by the Constitution, and endowed with some moral omniscience that places them on a plane well above the rest of us low-grade commoners. They are not misinformed or mistaken. They know precisely what they are doing, to where it will lead, how they’ll go about it, and what they’ll do to anyone who tries to stop them. You can’t change their minds by giving them more information. You can’t show them they are wrong about where their policies will lead. If you say, “Your policies will destroy America and plunge our children into a fascist dictatorship,” they will look you in the eye and say, “Well, duuh!” These people are monsters, bent on raping our Republic and feasting on its entrails. They are not misinformed but well-meaning loyal opposition, and to treat them as such would be make a pet of a rabid wolverine. They are maggots from the intellectual sewers of mankind.

But they are not invincible. They have not thrown over the Constitution yet, and it is still a very powerful force in our society. Let us use it to stop them. If we don’t use the Constitution, we will have to use armed force, for there is no third option. They will not simply go away, and they cannot be convinced by reason or argument, no matter how eloquent or unassailable. We must throw them out of office – every slimy, stinking one of them. Just to make sure we don’t miss one, we need to turn over the entire edifice of government in America, from the ward level to the White House. Our war cry must be, “NO INCUMBENTS!”

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Reb Sarge

Udall's staff on slavery.

2009-09-16T23:49:00.000-07:00

On 17 Aug, 2009, I wrote a letter to my congressvermin. I got the standard typewritten thorazine from each of them, but today (16 Sept.) I got an email from one of Senator Udall's staffers that just blew my mind!

Here's the letter I wrote to them:

I have a very serious question that occurred to me in the context of national health care, but I believe has far wider implications to the relationship between the American people and their government.

Could you please show me where in the Constitution the national government is given authority to send a man with a gun to take money from my neighbor, (and please do not be so disingenuous as to claim the IRS is not a lot of men with guns) give me a few pennies on the dollar of my neighbor’s money, and keep the rest to pay the wages of the guys with the guns.

I have searched the US Constitution over and over, but can’t find that. Could you please point out to me what I’m missing?

And here is the letter I got today, from Michael Bales. Do these guys really think the question was about the authority to levy taxes? They can't possibly be that stupid! This is terrifying! This clown seems to actually think the Constitution intended the authority to levy taxes equates to the authority to enslave.

Thank you for contacting Senator Tom Udall with your question of where in the Constitution the Congress is given the power to levy and collect taxes. The Senator asked that I contact you with the answer. The power to tax is delineated in Article I, Section 8, clause 1, of the Constitution which states:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States;

There is only one express exception to federal taxing power found in the United States Constitution. Article I, Section 9 provides “No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State.” I hope this answers your question.

Best,
Michael Bales
Legislative Correspondent
Office of Senator Tom Udall
Michael_Bales@tomudall.senate.gov

Lower costs, my foot!

2009-09-16T23:41:00.000-07:00

The current flap about “controlling health care costs” baffles me on several points. Here’s one. The government is talking about health care insurance, and paying all these medical bills.

Hmmm, says I.

Let’s say I were buying a loaf of bread, and the storeowner wanted $100 for it. I’m filled with despair because I have about five bucks, and I’m hungry. Along comes this tall, good-looking black fellow in a really sharp suit, and he says, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take some money from this fund I have here, and I’ll pay the other $95.”

“Great,” says I, and out I go with the bread. But later, I hear the black fellow say on TV that he has lowered the cost of bread.

Like bloody hell, he did! If anything, he guaranteed bread will ALWAYS cost at LEAST a hundred bucks a loaf! He didn’t lower the price; he just paid what the jerk in the store was asking. You don’t seriously think the store owner, having tasted blood, and knowing where he can get more, will ever actually lower his price, do you?

But then comes the really aggravating part. I gets to thinking, “I wonder where that fund he mentioned came from?

And then it hits me; that fund was taken from me, in the first place! That crooked sonofabitch took my money – and a lot more than the $95 he paid for the bread – and invested it in a guaranteed level of inflation that would choke a Weimar banker, and then had the unmitigated gall to brag to me that he’d lowered the cost of my bread! He didn’t lower a flippin thing! All he did was make sure the cost would never come below $100, and took from me the money I might have used to pay for the bread, in the first place.

Let’s break this down a little more. The government has passed laws and allowed – nay, encouraged and mandated – practices that have caused medical costs to go through the roof. Now, rather than actually doing anything to reduce those costs, they are going to rob me, my children, and every future generation of Americans in order to pay the costs they have created. And, of course, pay themselves a handsome wage for their hard work.

Ah, Fascist America! Ya gotta love it!

The real reason for this blog

2009-09-13T23:59:00.000-07:00

What do y'all think about this? As of right now - 1242pm, mountain daylight time, on 3 Sept., 2009, this is an original email. It isn't being forwarded from some unknown source. I wrote it and am sending it to my friends and family.

I'm thinking we need to clean house in our government. I mean, get every incumbent out of office. Every, stinkin' one of them, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent, liberal, moderate, or conservative, left, right or middle. Just nuke the government, from the city level to the federal legislature.

Won't that mean getting rid of some good ones, too? Yup. All two or three of 'em. The point we need to make, right now, is not about what we judge good or bad, but that the government answers to us, the voters. There are very few innocent parties in government, anyway, and those that are decent will be welcome to come back later. In fact, it might be a good idea to do the same thing again in two years.

How can we get all sides to agree to this? That's why I say just get rid of everybody. The point, again, is not so much with whom they are replaced, but that we kick their miserable behinds out of office. If you want to replace a Democrat with another Democrat, or a Republican with another Republican, that's fine. Remember, we aren't trying make a point of what we want right now. This is a show of pure, brute power, to let all who would run for office that they are dealing with some highly incensed voters.

The instant we start picking and choosing, whether based on party or quality, the whole thing will instantly disintegrate into the kind of mindless bickering that got us here, in the first place. I'll give up all of my incumbents if you'll give up all of yours. Mine are demonstrably as despicable as yours, anyway. I'd like to replace them with candidates I like, but at this point, the main necessity is to show them who's boss.

Can you imagine the impact on people with entrenched power - those who have been in office for 15 to 30 years - of suddenly finding themselves sitting on the curb with their suitcases at their feet? I honestly believe that, if We, the People of the United States, (neat turn of phrase, that!) can pull this off, we will be rewarded with a government that is VASTLY more responsible and responsive.

What do you think? I'd like to ask that this be forwarded as much as possible. If there's any merit to it, at all, it will be accepted and forwarded again. If not, it will be trashed and forgotten.

Health care - the current issue

2009-09-12T23:07:00.000-07:00

LETTER TO ALL three of my congressvermin, plus Obama 17 AUG 09

I have a very serious question that occurred to me in the context of national health care, but I believe has far wider implications to the relationship between the American people and their government.

Could you please show me where in the Constitution the national government is given authority to send a man with a gun to take money from my neighbor, (and please do not be so disingenuous as to claim the IRS is not a lot of men with guns) give me a few pennies on the dollar of my neighbor’s money, and keep the rest to pay the wages of the guys with the guns.

I have searched the US Constitution over and over, but can’t find that. Could you please point out to me what I’m missing?

What's your angle?

2009-09-12T22:57:00.000-07:00

It would be helpful to me - and maybe others - to see the kind of letters folks are writing to their congressvermin and the vermin-in-chief. If you have a letter or letters that you are proud of, I'd like to read 'em.

Most especially, if you have letters that have drawn anything other than the canned, staff-written puss that I've been getting from my own vermin.

Do you suppose maybe my opinion of them as vermin is affecting their response? I hadn't thought of that! Oh, crap! What if I'm going to have to be civil to them?

2009-09-12T04:04:00.000-07:00

This isn’t about health care. It isn’t about green jobs. It isn’t about bail outs or bonuses or stimuli. And it sure as the devil isn’t about race. It’s about liberty, and liberty is about life.

People create their wealth by labor, intelligence, and their own value judgments. People can redistribute – ie, spend or invest – their wealth as they see fit. They are capable of doing this entirely on their own. They may choose to not support some causes or programs that are favored by folks in the government.

The problem isn’t that The People don’t have the wealth to do something. The problem is that they won’t do it if left to make the decision freely. The folks in government, being certain that their own decision-making ability, or morality, or value structure is superior to that of the folks outside government, feel the need to override the freely-made decisions of the latter.

No government can claim more wealth than the combined, aggregate wealth of its People. Folks in the government can’t create wealth to support their causes because a government produces nothing but force. They can only take wealth from the People and give it to those causes or programs of which they in the government approve. How do they take that wealth? Under threat of force. Try not paying your taxes for a while. Sooner or later, some character with a gun will come to your door and invite you to go with him. Refuse, and you’ll get a better look at that gun.

Things the folks outside government approve of survive on the value judgments of the People. Things the folks in government approve of survive on wealth taken from the People and from the things of which they approve by force of arms.

No government exists as some soulless thing, entire of itself, with its own being. A government is a collection of individual human beings. When someone says the government can do something better than the People, they are really saying that this group of folks over here is smarter than that group over there.

By whose authority does anyone say such a thing? By what omniscience do they say who is smarter? What on earth or under Heaven gives one randomly-selected group of people the right and the power to deprive another group of the right to make their own value judgments? From whence comes this authority for an all-knowing government to say, “My values are superior to your values, so by the power of this gun, I hereby lay claim to the work of your heart and hand in order that I might use it for my own purposes?”

That’s what this is about. That’s why I, like Thomas Jefferson, pledge undying hostility to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.

On soap and education

2009-09-10T10:16:00.001-07:00

Mark Twain said, "Soap and education may not be as sudden as a massacre, but are probably more deadly in the long run."

Throughout my life, I've tried to make myself clean and smart, but some folks have said I'm just dangerous. We'll see.

Just starting

2009-09-10T10:11:00.001-07:00

Well, this is sort of like walking into what you didn't realize was a biker bar. I'm standing just inside the door, letting my eyes adjust, wondering what the hell I'm doing here. Y'all be gentle with me; this is my first blog.