Yes I have been gone for a long while. A really long while. The simple fact is that I was in the middle of conducting a research project and getting good grades in college. I have now graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Degree in Psychology, minor in Philosophy, and an award for my research. That was a crap load of work, but it is over. I am back and have enough free time to write something here for my non-existent readers. It has always seemed like a stupid idea to keep a running record of stupidity for posterity to look at, but I believe in unwavering honesty about my ignorance and (hopefully) evolving intelligence. I think it keeps me in check should I ever become so full of myself that I think I am infallible.
Of course who cares about this crap, let's talk about inflation. First of all, what is inflation? Inflation is the relative change in price of one commodity in relation to another. I must make sure this is understood. There is no one inflation, there are hundreds of inflations, and a few averages we use. For the purposes of this discussion, we will only be talking about inflation of commodities relative to money.
The best way to explain why inflation occurs is to imagine that you wanted to buy apples. You certainly would not buy just one apple every time you went to a supermarket, the gas would quickly add up. Instead you would probably buy say, two dozen apples so that you could make some apple pies or apple butter. Suppose for a moment that the man from the farmers market had exactly 24 apples, and that he could sell them to you for $15 (organic is expensive). Well, assuming you thought this was a fair price, you would buy those apples.
Now suppose the next year he had a bumper crop of 40 apples. Well he could sell them for the same price of 8 apples for $5, but past experience tells him that you would only buy 24 apples. Indeed, you probably don't want much more than that because while you may like apples, more apples can be boring. Indeed, each additional apple would be worth less to you than the previous apple. The farmer though has more apples, and it would be crazy to sell you 24 apples for $15 and then get stuck with 16 apples that he cannot sell. After all, his apples are worth something. The solution is that you lower the price of the apples with regard to how many he wishes to sell (all of them). You may not be willing to buy more apples at the current price, but a slightly lower price would eventually be found so that the farmer could make his extra sum of money and yet you would still be willing to buy.
Now the Farmer has a bad crop and only has 16 apples to sell. He still wants to make the most he can make of his crop, but he does not have the supply. The farmer could try to sell the apples at the usual price of a normal crop, but if he did, he would make only $10. The simple fact is that the farmer would want to raise the prices so he could make more per apple. Sure, you would not want to buy as many apples if they cost more, but he does not care if you are unwilling to buy 24 apples if he only has 16!
How does this apply to inflation? Remember that all other commodities are supposed to be fixed (to a certain extent) while the monetary supply is increasing. If we were bartering corn for apples, a certain amount of corn would be worth a certain amount of apples depending on their demand and supply. Also a certain amount of money would be equal to those two quantities of commodities. However if the amount of money in the system increases, the amount of apples used to buy corn is still the same, yet there is more money. So either the money is not circulated, or the money loses value in comparison to the apples and corn. Adding money does not add wealth like so many Keynesian scholars may have you believe (even Keynes would disagree with this idea so I am not really sure where this idea comes from). Wealth is the usable resources that are in existence. Money is merely a commodity used to standardize bartering practices. Printing money does not create more food, build more houses, make new games, design new phones. The only thing money does is create a standard that all people can use to trade value for value. Indeed, as long as the purpose of the commodity is clear, it does not matter what is used. If everyone began to use paperclips as a standard of value, that would work just as well. This is not that far fetched. After all, most money is now electronic bits.
I think I am done for the day. I will be back later next week to talk more about inflation.
Nowhereman
Showing posts with label Nowhereman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nowhereman. Show all posts
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Friday, July 31, 2009
Why Government Intervention Will Always Fail
Many people often claim that more government intervention is necessary for a market's success to become assured. Examples abound everywhere. Just recently, it has become a mantra of congress and the media (excluding Fox news and a few newspapers) that this entire crisis was caused by individuals not being regulated enough. The idea is, as a caller on a radio show I listen to on occasion said, is that if people are given less choice (his words, not mine) then the market will be less volatile. In other words, if people are controlled just right, the market itself can be controlled in a free market system.
The reason people want to control the market has not really changed much for a long time. It all revolves around this idea of 'social fairness'. The idea is that our current system allows for greed, and that these greedy people, through acting in their own best interest, affect the markets adversely. It is also claimed further that after these markets collapse, the “rich” come out on top while the “poor” lose their shirts. These cycles of greed as any good liberal may call them are what is supposed to cause the bubbles and bursts of a market.
A little more background before I start. In his work “The End of Laissez-Fair”(1926 ), John Maynard Keynes wrote about the most basic parts of this theory of why we were doomed to fail in a truly free market system. In section three of this particular article he made several claims that, given his description of laissez-fair, seemed to work.
To quote “...the conclusion that individuals acting independently for their own advantage will produce the greatest aggregate of wealth, depends on a variety of unreal assumptions to the effect that the processes of production and consumption are in no way organic, that there exists a sufficient foreknowledge of conditions and requirements, and that there are adequate opportunities of obtaining this foreknowledge.”
To put his statement simply, his strong refutation of laissez-fair is that people could never possibly be able to predict, and therefore control the market for their own benefit. Hence, the idea that everyone benefits in the long run due to individual initiative is a crock. Unfortunately for Keynes, this argument works far better against himself than it does against Laissez-Fair economics.
Keynes's idea is that while an individual would not likely be able to help himself, let alone the whole of the populous, a large group of people, like a government, could. It is s simple enough hypothesis. Suppose you were trying to make a million dollars. You try to do this in, say, corn. To make it easy, we could suppose you were an expert farmer. Even given all of this information, all of this declarative knowledge, you can't possibly know everything that will have an effect on the price of corn. That would require knowing what the harvest would be like in every country at every point in time in the year, the quality of that corn, what diseases are rampant in what area and at what times, what new technologies will come out to increase the price of corn, any and all food fads that affect demand, and then both the purchasing power, and the affinity for your particular product, corn. If it seems impossible to hold all of that in your head, don't worry, you should not be able to.
Instead of just one expert, as in the last example, Keynes suggests that a market can be controlled through the joint knowledge of many experts all studying one thing, the economy. This idea makes sense if you ignore some problems I mention later. Suppose you have four farmers all working together. One farmer focuses all his time on harvest yields, another on technologies,and another on food demand, and the last one on diseases. It would be a lot easier to study the entire system if everyone involved only studied a part of it. This is where Keynes is coming from, more people equals more knowledge, more knowledge allows for better control. So if you get enough experts into government, then that government can literally control the market for the greater good of all of mankind.
However as history shows us, his theory does not hold scientific water. Keynes was right, it is not possible for any individual to know what would happen everywhere all at once so that he/she could predict the markets. He was wrong about the reason though. His assumption is that a lack of knowledge was the cause of this individual not being an accurate predictor of the world, but it isn't the knowledge that he does not have, but the actions he makes based on the knowledge he does have.
A simple fact of life is that the market is made up of a lot of people, billions of people in fact, all making decisions on the basis of some incomplete knowledge of the world. Suppose though that a large entity like a government, based on more complete knowledge of the current market conditions decided to help farmers make more money by buying up corn. Farmers, knowing that corn is a favorite staple food, respond by planting more corn and consumers, expecting corn prices to go up, respond by switching to other staple foods. Suddenly farmers of corn that can't be sold fast enough and the excess rots.
Suppose I built a time machine and happen to discover that a certain stock increases in value by 300% next week. So I take a large amount of money and buy a large share of that stock. So everyone else noticing the decrease in availability in stock, sell to make a smaller, but more assured profit. The stock tanks and I lose my shirt.
The point is that you cannot know what will happen not because of a lack of knowledge, but because your very attempts to control the free market, affect the free market. Just like the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, the very act of measuring the market, affects the market. Further, the more people you get in the pool trying to make a large wave, the less predictable the waves become. Go back to the time travel story, if I had bought only 100 shares, would that have a smaller impact on the market than if I tried to buy one million?
Because individuals have a much smaller impact, the fact they know far less than the government is inconsequential to their success. They need only read a very small number of trends and then follow the wave long enough to get rooted. A government though will always create a large splash because 1) they are extremely visible, and therefor so are their actions, 2) their foreknowledge of the events are often public, if they think a bank will suffer, the fact they think that will make the bank suffer even if the information the government has is wrong, and 3) the actions tend to be very very large, so large in fact that a single small transaction by the government is equal to the net worth of even the richest of the rich. These facts make it so that every action the government makes will be anticipated and the market changes automatically.
Further, Keynes's assertion that the market would be more stable with more government is insane. Just suppose the government, after buying all that corn and forcing the prices to go up temporarily, decides to release its corn to the public to allow the prices to drop. What reactions would take place? People might not buy corn for a little while, and those who do (seeing the prices dropped back down) won't buy enough to make up for the decrease in profit. Suppose this continued with the government just 'tweaking everything until it gets it just right' for awhile. Would you invest in farms or corn futures? Would you even know? The short answer is no.
When the market becomes unstable it becomes hard to predict. It would be like trying to predict the waves in a pond that was shot with a hundred rounds. The only option is to sit back and wait for things to calm down and become more predictable. This is also true of the economy. Suppose the economy became extremely unstable, would you invest or wait to see how things go? The problem is that when the market becomes unstable due to these effects, people don't invest money in the market in the form of businesses and jobs. This means that government intervention, which naturally causes instability, causes job losses and therefor recessions. This is true no matter the type of intervention used.
The only way Keynes could ever be proven right is to remove the free market altogether. You see, Keynesian economics works only in the event every facet can be controlled, including the people in the free market. However without free people making free choices, you do not have a free market. You have a government market. Only when freedom, or at least all forms of economic freedom are abolished can the market become truly predictable and controllable.
The conclusion then is that the government, assuming they are not stupid, wants to and needs to destroy the free market and replace it with some sort of feudalism. People cannot be permitted to make decisions of any sort. Not even about what he or she wants to eat or what doctor he or she wants to see. If you can make that decision, then the government cannot control the market, and as the market is made up of the people, controlling the market necessarily requires controlling the people.
Remember, the only people who will ever tell you they can control the market for you is either an idiot or a tyrant. Don't be fooled into thinking you are getting a sweet deal, because the cards will fall and the house always wins when you choose to gamble with them.
The reason people want to control the market has not really changed much for a long time. It all revolves around this idea of 'social fairness'. The idea is that our current system allows for greed, and that these greedy people, through acting in their own best interest, affect the markets adversely. It is also claimed further that after these markets collapse, the “rich” come out on top while the “poor” lose their shirts. These cycles of greed as any good liberal may call them are what is supposed to cause the bubbles and bursts of a market.
A little more background before I start. In his work “The End of Laissez-Fair”(1926 ), John Maynard Keynes wrote about the most basic parts of this theory of why we were doomed to fail in a truly free market system. In section three of this particular article he made several claims that, given his description of laissez-fair, seemed to work.
To quote “...the conclusion that individuals acting independently for their own advantage will produce the greatest aggregate of wealth, depends on a variety of unreal assumptions to the effect that the processes of production and consumption are in no way organic, that there exists a sufficient foreknowledge of conditions and requirements, and that there are adequate opportunities of obtaining this foreknowledge.”
To put his statement simply, his strong refutation of laissez-fair is that people could never possibly be able to predict, and therefore control the market for their own benefit. Hence, the idea that everyone benefits in the long run due to individual initiative is a crock. Unfortunately for Keynes, this argument works far better against himself than it does against Laissez-Fair economics.
Keynes's idea is that while an individual would not likely be able to help himself, let alone the whole of the populous, a large group of people, like a government, could. It is s simple enough hypothesis. Suppose you were trying to make a million dollars. You try to do this in, say, corn. To make it easy, we could suppose you were an expert farmer. Even given all of this information, all of this declarative knowledge, you can't possibly know everything that will have an effect on the price of corn. That would require knowing what the harvest would be like in every country at every point in time in the year, the quality of that corn, what diseases are rampant in what area and at what times, what new technologies will come out to increase the price of corn, any and all food fads that affect demand, and then both the purchasing power, and the affinity for your particular product, corn. If it seems impossible to hold all of that in your head, don't worry, you should not be able to.
Instead of just one expert, as in the last example, Keynes suggests that a market can be controlled through the joint knowledge of many experts all studying one thing, the economy. This idea makes sense if you ignore some problems I mention later. Suppose you have four farmers all working together. One farmer focuses all his time on harvest yields, another on technologies,and another on food demand, and the last one on diseases. It would be a lot easier to study the entire system if everyone involved only studied a part of it. This is where Keynes is coming from, more people equals more knowledge, more knowledge allows for better control. So if you get enough experts into government, then that government can literally control the market for the greater good of all of mankind.
However as history shows us, his theory does not hold scientific water. Keynes was right, it is not possible for any individual to know what would happen everywhere all at once so that he/she could predict the markets. He was wrong about the reason though. His assumption is that a lack of knowledge was the cause of this individual not being an accurate predictor of the world, but it isn't the knowledge that he does not have, but the actions he makes based on the knowledge he does have.
A simple fact of life is that the market is made up of a lot of people, billions of people in fact, all making decisions on the basis of some incomplete knowledge of the world. Suppose though that a large entity like a government, based on more complete knowledge of the current market conditions decided to help farmers make more money by buying up corn. Farmers, knowing that corn is a favorite staple food, respond by planting more corn and consumers, expecting corn prices to go up, respond by switching to other staple foods. Suddenly farmers of corn that can't be sold fast enough and the excess rots.
Suppose I built a time machine and happen to discover that a certain stock increases in value by 300% next week. So I take a large amount of money and buy a large share of that stock. So everyone else noticing the decrease in availability in stock, sell to make a smaller, but more assured profit. The stock tanks and I lose my shirt.
The point is that you cannot know what will happen not because of a lack of knowledge, but because your very attempts to control the free market, affect the free market. Just like the Heisenberg uncertainty principal, the very act of measuring the market, affects the market. Further, the more people you get in the pool trying to make a large wave, the less predictable the waves become. Go back to the time travel story, if I had bought only 100 shares, would that have a smaller impact on the market than if I tried to buy one million?
Because individuals have a much smaller impact, the fact they know far less than the government is inconsequential to their success. They need only read a very small number of trends and then follow the wave long enough to get rooted. A government though will always create a large splash because 1) they are extremely visible, and therefor so are their actions, 2) their foreknowledge of the events are often public, if they think a bank will suffer, the fact they think that will make the bank suffer even if the information the government has is wrong, and 3) the actions tend to be very very large, so large in fact that a single small transaction by the government is equal to the net worth of even the richest of the rich. These facts make it so that every action the government makes will be anticipated and the market changes automatically.
Further, Keynes's assertion that the market would be more stable with more government is insane. Just suppose the government, after buying all that corn and forcing the prices to go up temporarily, decides to release its corn to the public to allow the prices to drop. What reactions would take place? People might not buy corn for a little while, and those who do (seeing the prices dropped back down) won't buy enough to make up for the decrease in profit. Suppose this continued with the government just 'tweaking everything until it gets it just right' for awhile. Would you invest in farms or corn futures? Would you even know? The short answer is no.
When the market becomes unstable it becomes hard to predict. It would be like trying to predict the waves in a pond that was shot with a hundred rounds. The only option is to sit back and wait for things to calm down and become more predictable. This is also true of the economy. Suppose the economy became extremely unstable, would you invest or wait to see how things go? The problem is that when the market becomes unstable due to these effects, people don't invest money in the market in the form of businesses and jobs. This means that government intervention, which naturally causes instability, causes job losses and therefor recessions. This is true no matter the type of intervention used.
The only way Keynes could ever be proven right is to remove the free market altogether. You see, Keynesian economics works only in the event every facet can be controlled, including the people in the free market. However without free people making free choices, you do not have a free market. You have a government market. Only when freedom, or at least all forms of economic freedom are abolished can the market become truly predictable and controllable.
The conclusion then is that the government, assuming they are not stupid, wants to and needs to destroy the free market and replace it with some sort of feudalism. People cannot be permitted to make decisions of any sort. Not even about what he or she wants to eat or what doctor he or she wants to see. If you can make that decision, then the government cannot control the market, and as the market is made up of the people, controlling the market necessarily requires controlling the people.
Remember, the only people who will ever tell you they can control the market for you is either an idiot or a tyrant. Don't be fooled into thinking you are getting a sweet deal, because the cards will fall and the house always wins when you choose to gamble with them.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
It is Time to Drop the Word Conservative
Let me start by saying first-of-all that I am not claiming that we abandon the 'conservative' principles we hold dear. So do not reply telling me that I have given up, threw in the towel, betrayed the movement, etc... I also am not saying that we begin trying our hand at the liberals game and try to 'control the language'. What I am saying though is that we need to stop letting ourselves be branded or that we cease to hold on to a term we have held for long and that we simply begin to call ourselves and the people we oppose by their correct names.
The word "Conservative" refers to someone who wishes to retain, to 'conserve' the current order of the world. In simpler terms, a conservative seeks to ensure that things remain the same. Let me be clear, under this definition, we are no longer 'conservatives'. This is an obvious point as we no longer wish to conserve our current position in the world.
On the off chance you do not believe me, consider:
Simply put, the very system we are said to want to protect and 'conserve' no longer exists. Today, to be a conservative is to want government intervention, to desire handouts, and to accept taxation as a necessity for the common good. In other words, to be a conservative today, is simply to be a slightly less radical liberal. This is because the beliefs held by the people that call themselves conservatives are no longer in place. The things that are in place are the very government programs that we want to end, the taxes we want removed, the bureaucracies we want dissolved, the regulations we want lifted, the practices we want ended. Nothing in our current government is left to us to conserve. Even our founding document is now more of a decoration than a document to be enforced. It would be simpler to find a genie to grant wishes than to find things we wish to conserve.
In short, we are now the radicals. If you do not believe me then read the tenth amendment to someone who calls themselves a liberal. If you are not hounded for being 'crazy' then I am truly amazed. We are now the crazies. This sounds insane to think, but consider the crazy ideas many people now accept without question. We now live in the world that gives credence to the remark that "the lunatics are running the asylum." When it is the lunatics who run the world, is it not logical to assume that it is the sane who are called crazy? Insane? Radical?
The term conservative no longer applies to us anymore and so it seems we need a new word to identify ourselves with. This term already exists. That term is "Classical Liberal". A word from which Progressives originally snaked the term 'Liberal' in order to change their colors for a time. The simple fact is that we have always been Classical Liberals. We simply have allowed the Progressive movement to re-brand us as conservatives in order to make us sound old and dusty. This no longer has to be.
That term is our term and many already identify with it. As long as we allow ourselves to be called conservatives, the progressive movement will always be able to tell the world how it seeks to change the world. As the very word conservative contains within it the meanings they need to place the blame on our shoulders, our possessing it, even reveling in it will simply be a hindrance.
In order for us to win this battle, we must educate everyone and tell them what it is we mean. The word conservative cannot be tolerated anymore as confusion can only be created by such a word. In preaching a change of government, we must not also incorporate words that confuse our intent. We cannot preach change as the "Conservative Party" or as the "Grand Ole Party". We must leave behind us our tendency to cling to things that possess a certain tenacity for it is this tendency toward the present that people wish to avoid.
This world can still be won with ideas as long as their exists one person's mind which is not yet made up. These minds however do ask for consistency in message, and it is best that we choose even our words carefully so that we do not get confused with the current set of ideals.
The word "Conservative" refers to someone who wishes to retain, to 'conserve' the current order of the world. In simpler terms, a conservative seeks to ensure that things remain the same. Let me be clear, under this definition, we are no longer 'conservatives'. This is an obvious point as we no longer wish to conserve our current position in the world.
On the off chance you do not believe me, consider:
- We have sought, not the continuation of things as they are, but of things as they were.
- To this end we have sought not our current government, but a smaller one. i.e. different government.
- We have argued for lower spending, not our current budget, but a smaller different one.
- We have argued against the high taxes we have had repeatedly imposed upon us, and argued against this continued practice. i.e. we have argued for an end to the current system.
- We wish our government to be held accountable to the people, and held in check by its laws and restrictions, especially its limits on power. In other words, we want our system to be governed differently from the way it is now.
- We seek an end to government handouts and demand a return to self-reliance.
Simply put, the very system we are said to want to protect and 'conserve' no longer exists. Today, to be a conservative is to want government intervention, to desire handouts, and to accept taxation as a necessity for the common good. In other words, to be a conservative today, is simply to be a slightly less radical liberal. This is because the beliefs held by the people that call themselves conservatives are no longer in place. The things that are in place are the very government programs that we want to end, the taxes we want removed, the bureaucracies we want dissolved, the regulations we want lifted, the practices we want ended. Nothing in our current government is left to us to conserve. Even our founding document is now more of a decoration than a document to be enforced. It would be simpler to find a genie to grant wishes than to find things we wish to conserve.
In short, we are now the radicals. If you do not believe me then read the tenth amendment to someone who calls themselves a liberal. If you are not hounded for being 'crazy' then I am truly amazed. We are now the crazies. This sounds insane to think, but consider the crazy ideas many people now accept without question. We now live in the world that gives credence to the remark that "the lunatics are running the asylum." When it is the lunatics who run the world, is it not logical to assume that it is the sane who are called crazy? Insane? Radical?
The term conservative no longer applies to us anymore and so it seems we need a new word to identify ourselves with. This term already exists. That term is "Classical Liberal". A word from which Progressives originally snaked the term 'Liberal' in order to change their colors for a time. The simple fact is that we have always been Classical Liberals. We simply have allowed the Progressive movement to re-brand us as conservatives in order to make us sound old and dusty. This no longer has to be.
That term is our term and many already identify with it. As long as we allow ourselves to be called conservatives, the progressive movement will always be able to tell the world how it seeks to change the world. As the very word conservative contains within it the meanings they need to place the blame on our shoulders, our possessing it, even reveling in it will simply be a hindrance.
In order for us to win this battle, we must educate everyone and tell them what it is we mean. The word conservative cannot be tolerated anymore as confusion can only be created by such a word. In preaching a change of government, we must not also incorporate words that confuse our intent. We cannot preach change as the "Conservative Party" or as the "Grand Ole Party". We must leave behind us our tendency to cling to things that possess a certain tenacity for it is this tendency toward the present that people wish to avoid.
This world can still be won with ideas as long as their exists one person's mind which is not yet made up. These minds however do ask for consistency in message, and it is best that we choose even our words carefully so that we do not get confused with the current set of ideals.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Individualism and Collectivism
In UNLV, I am a Psychology major and a Philosophy minor (undeclared). I have been spending a lot of time trying to prove, in a philosophical manner, a central tenet of individualism. If you read my previous posts I have made, my obvious bias toward individualism can be seen. When I was little, I thought that it was an undeniable fact that I was right, and that if logic were followed, everything I believed in would be proven. I now know this was naive and ignorant of me. This is because I had accepted, as an absolute, an axiom that I now seek to prove should be accepted by everyone. I said I would focus more on theory now that news is calming down, or to be more precise, is becoming more repetitive. (You can only do so many “Obama's taking away our rights, or violating our constitution” posts in a row) I shall focus on two axioms that most people seem to take for granted as being correct. I shall try to make this sound as non-philosophical as possible because, well, most people hate philosophy for that reason. So I will tone down the language so as to not bore the crap out of my > .01 reader per day. If someone happens to come across this and mistake it for an intelligent conversation, then feel free to post objections to me or my argument.
A crap load of people call themselves individualists or claim at some point that individual rights are important. This is probably the reason I began to believe my axiom was absolute. Alas, natural law theories like that are easily destroyed. I realized this when I was talking to a guy on campus at UNLV. He was an Obama stumper and naturally we got into a heated argument. Eventually I tried to get him to tell me what premise is his argument must be based of off for what he was telling me to be acceptable. Naturally the reaction I got was the question repeated back at me to which I gave the often used reply, “I believe that individual liberty and responsibility are the most sacred things in this world.” I was rebuffed with the reply “but how could we build a society?” Though memory may not serve me well enough for that to be an exact quote, his reply allows me to begin describing what believe, what I think everyone believes or should believe if they are conservatives or libertarians, and what I have begun to learn about the opposing ideology of the man I had that argument with.
Consider what I was saying first of all. Essentially I was explaining that I believed in liberty; which, in this case, is defined as freedom to choose. This is a central tenet of a philosophy called individualism. This is primarily a political philosophy, but I am trying to extend this to ethical debates as well. On the political side, this states that the smallest unit that possess its own rights and therefore must be respected in its own opinions and choices with regard to itself is an individual. To be more clear, every person must be respected and counted as far as their voice, opinions, beliefs, desires, and freedoms go. To be even more clear about this, it is an accepted fact that every individual possesses their own rights and these rights cannot be determined from an outside source without their own consent. This means that there is no reason that is good enough to deny any individual's rights unless that right is freely given. I am making the assumption that the word 'freely' leaves out all forms of coercion.
In this respect, I was making a statement about what I believe is right. That being that I have rights that cannot be taken from me, as Jefferson would put it, rights that are inalienable. If you are a conservative or a libertarian then you likely already believe, or think you believe this whole heartedly. The man I was talking to made a statement that spoke to the heart of the opposite belief. This belief is the negation of individualism, or that 'It is not a fact of the world that any individual has a right that cannot be violated under any circumstances.' In other words, if it serves some purpose that is deemed worthy, then an individuals rights may be violated if it serves that purpose. This is the axiom that a collectivist must take as being true to be considered a collectivist. (It could be argued that a collectivist must also believe that these violations must be for the 'collective good', but this is not integral to my argument. If it does bother you, then simply note that a collectivist is an anti-individualist and that my arguments would apply to all anti-individualists as well.)
Let me put this into context. If I were a politician who was also an individualist, and say there were people starving in Calcutta that I wanted to save, then I could do anything that I wanted so long as I never violated another person's rights. For instance, it would be wrong obviously to kill a man and feed him to the children in Calcutta as that would probably violate his right to make choices with regard to his own life. Pretty simple huh? It would also be wrong to steal money from people, or otherwise compel them through force to give their money to the people of Calcutta. This is because I would be violating their own individual rights to choose what they should do with their possessions. I personally do believe in charity, but this belief does not grant me the right to violate others rights. A collectivist on the other hand would have no qualms about doing any of this if he or she decided it was a good thing.
That is the difference between individualism and collectivism, it is that simple. However, both have extreme consequences as well that I have been wrestling with. Starting with collectivism, some people may not yet have a problem with this yet. After all, the collectivist could argue, what is wrong about taking some small percentage of everyone's income if it ends world hunger. Peter Singer actually makes several claims and even alludes to the idea that someone ought to do just that in “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, though to be fair, this is mostly a result of his argument pattern. Who could argue that famine is a worthy cause? Most religions actually state that it is a moral obligation of all their followers that they be generous. Ignoring that, could it be hard to accept that people's lives are unimportant?
This line of thinking may get you jumping on the bandwagon a little too early though. Note that I could use the same sort of logic to argue that all children in the world must be given education. After all, would it not be a crime to allow a single child to go without this benefit? Imagine being unable to get a job somewhere that does not include saying “pull up to the next window please”. In fact, if it could be argued that any cause imaginable could be undertaken in this manner given the proper argument. If the cause is good, then the collectivist must agree that an individuals rights can be violated to achieve it. This is dangerous. Take Obama for example. No one will doubt that he believes that we must strive to help the working poor and so he supports all sorts of programs and taxes to do so. Consider though the possibility of an ideological shift. Now it is considered true that it is in the best interest of the population to be taught a certain thing. Maybe this thing could be argued to help the working poor as well if everyone was taught and and believed this thing. Imagine now this thing was that certain people or groups of people should be made infertile. Margret Sanger believed that “the idiots and morons should not be allowed to reproduce” and see sought funds for her crusade, successfully might I add.
The collectivist might argue now “That is obviously wrong and should not be allowed.” I could argue back though, “consider how much food is being wasted on the useless. If the useless could no longer reproduce, then there would be more food left over for the poor. Also production would likely increase faster ending poverty on a planet wide scale. Is it not more right to save the lives of millions over the mere ability to reproduce? In order to avoid this type of trap, the collectivist would now be forced to add qualifiers to his original axiom; qualifiers like “unless it leads to personal mutilation” or “unless it leads to death”. These qualifiers are just arbitrations and therefore up to arbitration. Could I not argue that back then we thought it wrong to castrate people on the basis of who they are, but now we no longer think that. Unless a rule is an absolute by virtue of being itself or being based upon something that is based upon itself, then there is no foundation strong enough to keep an arbitrary rule like that from being violated.
This may make collectivists run to become individualists now. I myself am an individualist and I have done a great deal of thinking about what it means to be an individualist. As I believe there is no circumstance that justifies violating someone else's rights, then I must also believe that even if it meant the death of children in Calcutta, I cannot choose to take someone else's rights to help another no matter the circumstances. This is an obvious point and almost all conservatives and libertarians will agree with this. This goes much further too. For instance, take a hypothetical many people have encountered. Suppose you are the president and you are kidnapped by strange terrorists who take you to a secluded room. In this room you are confronted with your grandmother who is bound and gagged. You are told that you have only two choices, either shoot your grandmother or blow up a city in your country. What is the right choice? A lot of people would answer “the first one” and this is used often to prove what is called Utilitarianism. However in this case I would say that neither choice is right by the strict definition of it. Pretty simple and agreeable right? That fact that shooting your grandmother might not be as bad as nuking a city, does not make killing your grandmother a good thing. Further, as an individualist, you would be forced to try for the 'third option' so many action stars try in movies. This is because the other two choices violated someones rights and this option, though its success rate is probably very low, does not.
Even the last point I made could be accepted by conservatives and libertarians, though it would be remarked as being impractical and so could not be exercised in the way I described it. I would not disagree with such a statement; though we should strive to create that perfect world where no one ever needs to have their rights violated. Now I find it necessary though to point our some places where conservatives and some libertarians cease to follow the logic of the axiom. The first point is at torture. Obviously torture is wrong if your are torturing for the hell of it, but it is applauded if it is done for what is considered good. Obviously, if you believe that an individual has certain inalienable rights, then barring the possibility that you would argue the person being tortured lacks these rights for some reason, you must agree that torture is wrong. I am probably hated at this moment but read on for a second. Torture is wrong, but the same argument regarding grandma and the terrorists could be used to argue for torture. Note though that this still means that torture is still wrong, not that it is right. What is we had our hands on a terrorist and discovered through some reliable source that he possessed information that could stop a nuclear bomb from going off. Would it not be right to get the information by any means necessary? No, it would not be right, but it may be unavoidable. This argument sounds pretty impotent if I were trying to stop torture. My real purpose is not to stop that though. My point is to make apparent the fact that torture is not a good thing, or even an okay thing. As such, it should never be regarded as such and should be used as a last resort at all times. This attack is more an attack against the attitude about torture than an attack against torture itself.
Maybe most people could come to terms with the above. However, this is not the only problem I have come across. Consider gay marriage. It is my opinion that both sides have the proper solution wrong. The left overwhelmingly believe it is our duty to legalize gay marriage both on the state and federal level as no one has a right to say no to anyone regarding who they love or who they can marry. Many people who call themselves conservatives believe that gay marriage should be banned to protect the sanctity of marriage. Here is the simple truth with regard to individualism, both sides are wrong! The left tends to first make the correct point that we have no say in other peoples marriage practices, but then they throw that away by continuing to use the government. This behavior implicitly acknowledges the government's (and therefore everyone else's) say in what they do. A lovely way to contradict yourself. Of course any conservative that preaches for smaller and less intrusive governments is also contradicting him or herself when they then insist on regulating away a kind of marriage. In reality, government intervention must be removed entirely to avoid this problem. Note that I am not saying we must accept what anyone else does, lets face it, I am not pro-gay. I personally believe that a homosexual lifestyle is a stupid choice of lifestyle. However, if you grant the right to regulate marriage from one group, you have also implicitly given permission to have the same done to yourself. For this reason, and the fact that it is plain wrong, you cannot regulate marriage. For more information on this argument, read my previous post on marriage.
Individualism is obviously very anti-government control and regulation. In fact, if the logic is followed well, then it would seem that the best form of government the world ought to exist under, is the government that most closely comes to Anarchy as possible, while still holding enough power to prevent people from violating each other's individual rights. If ever it were no longer necessary to use government intervention to prevent murder, theft or rape, then it would follow that it was no longer necessary to have a government. This may seem insane but consider what government was used for in the first place. It was created with the sole purpose to prevent chaos and rampant crime, it was also created to protect its citizens from enemies both at home and abroad. If none of these problems existed then what would be the use of such a construct? It would be like keeping a can opener when cans have been discontinued. This once again comes down to practicality. I do not think for a second the Utopian world described above will ever exist, but it is imperative according to individualism that only those rights should be taken that are absolutely necessary for people to live around each other and that the individual gives his or her explicit or implicit permission for all violations of his or her rights.
It is finally time to consider objections to Strong Individualism. I could argue that Individualism is self-contradicting. Imagine a serial-killer decided to use individualism. He claims that he has the right to choose whether or not he can stab a poor woman on the street. This woman would obviously not want this and so would claim that she has the right to choose to live. It seems then individualism protects both people and so contradicts itself. This is so only if you agree that all choices must be respected. If it instead reads something like “An action is wrong if and only if it violates another persons choice intentionally...” then this is no longer self contradicting in this way. This is because the serial-killer never possessed the right to kill the woman and so his rights are not diminished if he is disallowed.
One last objection is that individualism does not prevent fraud or consensual child molestation. To this individualism need to be modifies in a small way. Simply make it wrong to intentionally use information, restrict information, or in some way reduce the number of options the individual is aware of so as to undermine their ability to make a choice. So in the case of fraud, it is obviously wrong to misinform someone to trick them into a certain condition. In the case of consensual child molestation, even if the child were told before hand what was going to happen to him or her, it would be difficult to say the least, to prove that the child understood what was being described. Because of this, it seems that under the age of fifteen, it would be almost impossible to prove the individual had the ability to understand what was going on or the consequences of his or her actions.
I will be the first to admit that this is radical. It is insanely radical. I must point out though that most conservative and libertarians hold these truths to be fact. It would be dishonest to not follow them to their conclusions. While I do not expect most of what I have written here to ever be enacted in full, I do believe that we must at least always move in that direction. It is the right thing to do.
A crap load of people call themselves individualists or claim at some point that individual rights are important. This is probably the reason I began to believe my axiom was absolute. Alas, natural law theories like that are easily destroyed. I realized this when I was talking to a guy on campus at UNLV. He was an Obama stumper and naturally we got into a heated argument. Eventually I tried to get him to tell me what premise is his argument must be based of off for what he was telling me to be acceptable. Naturally the reaction I got was the question repeated back at me to which I gave the often used reply, “I believe that individual liberty and responsibility are the most sacred things in this world.” I was rebuffed with the reply “but how could we build a society?” Though memory may not serve me well enough for that to be an exact quote, his reply allows me to begin describing what believe, what I think everyone believes or should believe if they are conservatives or libertarians, and what I have begun to learn about the opposing ideology of the man I had that argument with.
Consider what I was saying first of all. Essentially I was explaining that I believed in liberty; which, in this case, is defined as freedom to choose. This is a central tenet of a philosophy called individualism. This is primarily a political philosophy, but I am trying to extend this to ethical debates as well. On the political side, this states that the smallest unit that possess its own rights and therefore must be respected in its own opinions and choices with regard to itself is an individual. To be more clear, every person must be respected and counted as far as their voice, opinions, beliefs, desires, and freedoms go. To be even more clear about this, it is an accepted fact that every individual possesses their own rights and these rights cannot be determined from an outside source without their own consent. This means that there is no reason that is good enough to deny any individual's rights unless that right is freely given. I am making the assumption that the word 'freely' leaves out all forms of coercion.
In this respect, I was making a statement about what I believe is right. That being that I have rights that cannot be taken from me, as Jefferson would put it, rights that are inalienable. If you are a conservative or a libertarian then you likely already believe, or think you believe this whole heartedly. The man I was talking to made a statement that spoke to the heart of the opposite belief. This belief is the negation of individualism, or that 'It is not a fact of the world that any individual has a right that cannot be violated under any circumstances.' In other words, if it serves some purpose that is deemed worthy, then an individuals rights may be violated if it serves that purpose. This is the axiom that a collectivist must take as being true to be considered a collectivist. (It could be argued that a collectivist must also believe that these violations must be for the 'collective good', but this is not integral to my argument. If it does bother you, then simply note that a collectivist is an anti-individualist and that my arguments would apply to all anti-individualists as well.)
Let me put this into context. If I were a politician who was also an individualist, and say there were people starving in Calcutta that I wanted to save, then I could do anything that I wanted so long as I never violated another person's rights. For instance, it would be wrong obviously to kill a man and feed him to the children in Calcutta as that would probably violate his right to make choices with regard to his own life. Pretty simple huh? It would also be wrong to steal money from people, or otherwise compel them through force to give their money to the people of Calcutta. This is because I would be violating their own individual rights to choose what they should do with their possessions. I personally do believe in charity, but this belief does not grant me the right to violate others rights. A collectivist on the other hand would have no qualms about doing any of this if he or she decided it was a good thing.
That is the difference between individualism and collectivism, it is that simple. However, both have extreme consequences as well that I have been wrestling with. Starting with collectivism, some people may not yet have a problem with this yet. After all, the collectivist could argue, what is wrong about taking some small percentage of everyone's income if it ends world hunger. Peter Singer actually makes several claims and even alludes to the idea that someone ought to do just that in “Famine, Affluence and Morality”, though to be fair, this is mostly a result of his argument pattern. Who could argue that famine is a worthy cause? Most religions actually state that it is a moral obligation of all their followers that they be generous. Ignoring that, could it be hard to accept that people's lives are unimportant?
This line of thinking may get you jumping on the bandwagon a little too early though. Note that I could use the same sort of logic to argue that all children in the world must be given education. After all, would it not be a crime to allow a single child to go without this benefit? Imagine being unable to get a job somewhere that does not include saying “pull up to the next window please”. In fact, if it could be argued that any cause imaginable could be undertaken in this manner given the proper argument. If the cause is good, then the collectivist must agree that an individuals rights can be violated to achieve it. This is dangerous. Take Obama for example. No one will doubt that he believes that we must strive to help the working poor and so he supports all sorts of programs and taxes to do so. Consider though the possibility of an ideological shift. Now it is considered true that it is in the best interest of the population to be taught a certain thing. Maybe this thing could be argued to help the working poor as well if everyone was taught and and believed this thing. Imagine now this thing was that certain people or groups of people should be made infertile. Margret Sanger believed that “the idiots and morons should not be allowed to reproduce” and see sought funds for her crusade, successfully might I add.
The collectivist might argue now “That is obviously wrong and should not be allowed.” I could argue back though, “consider how much food is being wasted on the useless. If the useless could no longer reproduce, then there would be more food left over for the poor. Also production would likely increase faster ending poverty on a planet wide scale. Is it not more right to save the lives of millions over the mere ability to reproduce? In order to avoid this type of trap, the collectivist would now be forced to add qualifiers to his original axiom; qualifiers like “unless it leads to personal mutilation” or “unless it leads to death”. These qualifiers are just arbitrations and therefore up to arbitration. Could I not argue that back then we thought it wrong to castrate people on the basis of who they are, but now we no longer think that. Unless a rule is an absolute by virtue of being itself or being based upon something that is based upon itself, then there is no foundation strong enough to keep an arbitrary rule like that from being violated.
This may make collectivists run to become individualists now. I myself am an individualist and I have done a great deal of thinking about what it means to be an individualist. As I believe there is no circumstance that justifies violating someone else's rights, then I must also believe that even if it meant the death of children in Calcutta, I cannot choose to take someone else's rights to help another no matter the circumstances. This is an obvious point and almost all conservatives and libertarians will agree with this. This goes much further too. For instance, take a hypothetical many people have encountered. Suppose you are the president and you are kidnapped by strange terrorists who take you to a secluded room. In this room you are confronted with your grandmother who is bound and gagged. You are told that you have only two choices, either shoot your grandmother or blow up a city in your country. What is the right choice? A lot of people would answer “the first one” and this is used often to prove what is called Utilitarianism. However in this case I would say that neither choice is right by the strict definition of it. Pretty simple and agreeable right? That fact that shooting your grandmother might not be as bad as nuking a city, does not make killing your grandmother a good thing. Further, as an individualist, you would be forced to try for the 'third option' so many action stars try in movies. This is because the other two choices violated someones rights and this option, though its success rate is probably very low, does not.
Even the last point I made could be accepted by conservatives and libertarians, though it would be remarked as being impractical and so could not be exercised in the way I described it. I would not disagree with such a statement; though we should strive to create that perfect world where no one ever needs to have their rights violated. Now I find it necessary though to point our some places where conservatives and some libertarians cease to follow the logic of the axiom. The first point is at torture. Obviously torture is wrong if your are torturing for the hell of it, but it is applauded if it is done for what is considered good. Obviously, if you believe that an individual has certain inalienable rights, then barring the possibility that you would argue the person being tortured lacks these rights for some reason, you must agree that torture is wrong. I am probably hated at this moment but read on for a second. Torture is wrong, but the same argument regarding grandma and the terrorists could be used to argue for torture. Note though that this still means that torture is still wrong, not that it is right. What is we had our hands on a terrorist and discovered through some reliable source that he possessed information that could stop a nuclear bomb from going off. Would it not be right to get the information by any means necessary? No, it would not be right, but it may be unavoidable. This argument sounds pretty impotent if I were trying to stop torture. My real purpose is not to stop that though. My point is to make apparent the fact that torture is not a good thing, or even an okay thing. As such, it should never be regarded as such and should be used as a last resort at all times. This attack is more an attack against the attitude about torture than an attack against torture itself.
Maybe most people could come to terms with the above. However, this is not the only problem I have come across. Consider gay marriage. It is my opinion that both sides have the proper solution wrong. The left overwhelmingly believe it is our duty to legalize gay marriage both on the state and federal level as no one has a right to say no to anyone regarding who they love or who they can marry. Many people who call themselves conservatives believe that gay marriage should be banned to protect the sanctity of marriage. Here is the simple truth with regard to individualism, both sides are wrong! The left tends to first make the correct point that we have no say in other peoples marriage practices, but then they throw that away by continuing to use the government. This behavior implicitly acknowledges the government's (and therefore everyone else's) say in what they do. A lovely way to contradict yourself. Of course any conservative that preaches for smaller and less intrusive governments is also contradicting him or herself when they then insist on regulating away a kind of marriage. In reality, government intervention must be removed entirely to avoid this problem. Note that I am not saying we must accept what anyone else does, lets face it, I am not pro-gay. I personally believe that a homosexual lifestyle is a stupid choice of lifestyle. However, if you grant the right to regulate marriage from one group, you have also implicitly given permission to have the same done to yourself. For this reason, and the fact that it is plain wrong, you cannot regulate marriage. For more information on this argument, read my previous post on marriage.
Individualism is obviously very anti-government control and regulation. In fact, if the logic is followed well, then it would seem that the best form of government the world ought to exist under, is the government that most closely comes to Anarchy as possible, while still holding enough power to prevent people from violating each other's individual rights. If ever it were no longer necessary to use government intervention to prevent murder, theft or rape, then it would follow that it was no longer necessary to have a government. This may seem insane but consider what government was used for in the first place. It was created with the sole purpose to prevent chaos and rampant crime, it was also created to protect its citizens from enemies both at home and abroad. If none of these problems existed then what would be the use of such a construct? It would be like keeping a can opener when cans have been discontinued. This once again comes down to practicality. I do not think for a second the Utopian world described above will ever exist, but it is imperative according to individualism that only those rights should be taken that are absolutely necessary for people to live around each other and that the individual gives his or her explicit or implicit permission for all violations of his or her rights.
It is finally time to consider objections to Strong Individualism. I could argue that Individualism is self-contradicting. Imagine a serial-killer decided to use individualism. He claims that he has the right to choose whether or not he can stab a poor woman on the street. This woman would obviously not want this and so would claim that she has the right to choose to live. It seems then individualism protects both people and so contradicts itself. This is so only if you agree that all choices must be respected. If it instead reads something like “An action is wrong if and only if it violates another persons choice intentionally...” then this is no longer self contradicting in this way. This is because the serial-killer never possessed the right to kill the woman and so his rights are not diminished if he is disallowed.
One last objection is that individualism does not prevent fraud or consensual child molestation. To this individualism need to be modifies in a small way. Simply make it wrong to intentionally use information, restrict information, or in some way reduce the number of options the individual is aware of so as to undermine their ability to make a choice. So in the case of fraud, it is obviously wrong to misinform someone to trick them into a certain condition. In the case of consensual child molestation, even if the child were told before hand what was going to happen to him or her, it would be difficult to say the least, to prove that the child understood what was being described. Because of this, it seems that under the age of fifteen, it would be almost impossible to prove the individual had the ability to understand what was going on or the consequences of his or her actions.
I will be the first to admit that this is radical. It is insanely radical. I must point out though that most conservative and libertarians hold these truths to be fact. It would be dishonest to not follow them to their conclusions. While I do not expect most of what I have written here to ever be enacted in full, I do believe that we must at least always move in that direction. It is the right thing to do.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Vindication and Agitation
I am back after a long hiatus. School continues to be disruptive to my hobby of yelling at no one, for no one to hear. Well, the GIVE act has almost vindicated me and the prediction I have made in December of last year. I need to get my congressman on the phone and ask him what in the world he thinks he is doing voting for that, but whatever. That is between me and him.
Since I took off to do a great many things at UNLV, a great big amount of ruckus has been made about bailouts, and even more about a bunch of guys getting their bonuses. Well, of course we could not block those bonuses; I mean, that would have been unconstitutional. Though that does not seem to be the reason for that. This is evidenced by a great many people clamoring for a tax on their bonuses. Gee whiz, that almost sounds unconstitutional. I mean... taxing particular people, and making the tax retroactive. Nah, I am just stupid. Besides, who cares about the constitution? It is our money!!
Let me first make the obvious point that if AIG was not bailed out, this conversation would not exist. But who cares about little facts like that? Let's just go grab our respective pitchforks and go hunting. The simple fact is that this IS our fault. It is not like AIG walked into our homes in the dead of night and took this money. The government, that we voted in, taxed it from us and gave the money to AIG while so many were crying out about some mysterious and vague end-of-the-world scenario. That is not to say no one cried out about these bailouts. Many, like me, were down right angry we were even considering it. Then we allowed them to fulfill their contracts, as was constitutionally required of us. Low and behold, one of the contracts we allowed them to honor included the bonuses.
Well people are outraged that their money is going to these big corporate execs. People are so angry now that they are even happy that we are going to take all their money via tax. Why are we allowing this? Does it not strike anyone as strange, or dare I say wrong to tax these men and women in particular?
Let me put this differently. What if it were you? What if, for whatever reason you want to choose, the government decided to tax you in particular? What if the reason was you do not give enough to charity? Or maybe it is because you earn an 'inordinate amount' of money in comparison to others in your same job? Or maybe it is simply because you happen to be registered for a certain party, or voted for a particular guy?
'No! That is different.' Certainly the circumstances and reasons are different, but can you tell me it wouldn't be done? With this 90% tax that is going through congress right now, we are giving congress precedent. This means that this belief that it could not happen to me goes away. You could argue that the reasons are different, but does that mean whatever reasons given for the unconstitutional tax levied on them are any more or less important then the ones that could be levied on you? You could say that this reason makes it justified, or that it was a punishment for a 'wrong' they have committed. However, could I not make up a reason for doing the exact same thing to anyone else and then claim that this reason is just as justifiable as the ones for this atrocity?
Once this door is opened it cannot be closed simply by crying bloody murder. If we take these bonuses, then there will be no reason why we shouldn't levy a tax on someone for having done something, anything. All we would need would be the proper motivation for it, whatever that motivation happens to be at that time. Maybe sexual preference, skin color, the fact that your hair is parted on the left. All that is required is that someone at some point makes up a good enough reason, and soon the rights of an individual are infringed "for the right reasons".
This is why a diminishing of rights of one, diminishes every person's rights. So you cannot allow this, even IF you think this is a good reason. The rights that protect you protect them as well. By giving the federal government permission to tax anyone in particular, you have given the government permission by assent to do the very same thing to anyone including yourself.
Why should I care though? Some people I know may want everyone to root for this. After all "the libs brought it upon themselves." Once all hell breaks loose these friends of mine will undoubtedly be the ones laughing all the way to the gas chamber. The reason I am against this line of logic is simple; I live here too. Though I warned people and was insulted, and am still insulted. Even though I put up with crap from every 'know-it-all' who listens to NPR; the fact still stands. I live here and I do not think I will be moving for awhile. Laughing at people for making mistakes, even horrible ones will not repair anything. It will get me and everyone else nowhere. We all must simply get together and vote for every conservative we possibly can in two years. When the problem is fixed, that will be the time we can go say I told you so.
Since I took off to do a great many things at UNLV, a great big amount of ruckus has been made about bailouts, and even more about a bunch of guys getting their bonuses. Well, of course we could not block those bonuses; I mean, that would have been unconstitutional. Though that does not seem to be the reason for that. This is evidenced by a great many people clamoring for a tax on their bonuses. Gee whiz, that almost sounds unconstitutional. I mean... taxing particular people, and making the tax retroactive. Nah, I am just stupid. Besides, who cares about the constitution? It is our money!!
Let me first make the obvious point that if AIG was not bailed out, this conversation would not exist. But who cares about little facts like that? Let's just go grab our respective pitchforks and go hunting. The simple fact is that this IS our fault. It is not like AIG walked into our homes in the dead of night and took this money. The government, that we voted in, taxed it from us and gave the money to AIG while so many were crying out about some mysterious and vague end-of-the-world scenario. That is not to say no one cried out about these bailouts. Many, like me, were down right angry we were even considering it. Then we allowed them to fulfill their contracts, as was constitutionally required of us. Low and behold, one of the contracts we allowed them to honor included the bonuses.
Well people are outraged that their money is going to these big corporate execs. People are so angry now that they are even happy that we are going to take all their money via tax. Why are we allowing this? Does it not strike anyone as strange, or dare I say wrong to tax these men and women in particular?
Let me put this differently. What if it were you? What if, for whatever reason you want to choose, the government decided to tax you in particular? What if the reason was you do not give enough to charity? Or maybe it is because you earn an 'inordinate amount' of money in comparison to others in your same job? Or maybe it is simply because you happen to be registered for a certain party, or voted for a particular guy?
'No! That is different.' Certainly the circumstances and reasons are different, but can you tell me it wouldn't be done? With this 90% tax that is going through congress right now, we are giving congress precedent. This means that this belief that it could not happen to me goes away. You could argue that the reasons are different, but does that mean whatever reasons given for the unconstitutional tax levied on them are any more or less important then the ones that could be levied on you? You could say that this reason makes it justified, or that it was a punishment for a 'wrong' they have committed. However, could I not make up a reason for doing the exact same thing to anyone else and then claim that this reason is just as justifiable as the ones for this atrocity?
Once this door is opened it cannot be closed simply by crying bloody murder. If we take these bonuses, then there will be no reason why we shouldn't levy a tax on someone for having done something, anything. All we would need would be the proper motivation for it, whatever that motivation happens to be at that time. Maybe sexual preference, skin color, the fact that your hair is parted on the left. All that is required is that someone at some point makes up a good enough reason, and soon the rights of an individual are infringed "for the right reasons".
This is why a diminishing of rights of one, diminishes every person's rights. So you cannot allow this, even IF you think this is a good reason. The rights that protect you protect them as well. By giving the federal government permission to tax anyone in particular, you have given the government permission by assent to do the very same thing to anyone including yourself.
Why should I care though? Some people I know may want everyone to root for this. After all "the libs brought it upon themselves." Once all hell breaks loose these friends of mine will undoubtedly be the ones laughing all the way to the gas chamber. The reason I am against this line of logic is simple; I live here too. Though I warned people and was insulted, and am still insulted. Even though I put up with crap from every 'know-it-all' who listens to NPR; the fact still stands. I live here and I do not think I will be moving for awhile. Laughing at people for making mistakes, even horrible ones will not repair anything. It will get me and everyone else nowhere. We all must simply get together and vote for every conservative we possibly can in two years. When the problem is fixed, that will be the time we can go say I told you so.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Time for some indentured learnitude.
Christmas is over and I am ready to come back and talk to myself again. During the campaign I, like many other college students, were bombarded with Obama imagery, free concerts and voter turnout rallies. During one of these I happened to walk by an Obama booth. The campaign stumper there told me all the usual, and my favorite line I was fed was 'You know Obama is going to give you 5k for college right?' I am sure this type of bribe works on a lot of people. Of course I brought up all the usual, “Where are you going to get the money?” “We are going to end the Iraq war. Then we will have all the money we need.” “That won't save enough money.” It continued for awhile of course.
It seems to never occur to anyone in college that money does not grow on trees. I always found that strange since presumably they all work for a living. I am a broke college student. I know people are having a hard time keeping up with bills. Still many college students are now rejoicing in their handouts. After the election I manged to sit down and think over this fact. When I mulled over it for a bit, I went temporarily insane because of what I figured out.
First of all this money must come from somewhere so therefor taxes go up, therefor prices go up and job losses go up. None of this is helpful obviously but this is also well covered by many before me. Let us assume for a second that the Obama stumper was right and let us say that the Iraq war would cover all of this. The simple fact is that colleges are businesses. It may seem to many libs to be somehow evil but these schools are not teaching law and economics for their health, they do it for a profit. Every college prices the tuition to restrict and attract certain groups of people. Higher prices tend to hit the high capita families, other colleges target middle classes and still others target upper lower classes. What do you think will happen if you throw 4k into the mix? If colleges really were these ultra accepting institutions that wanted to get more lower income families into college, then they could just lower the tuition cost 4k. The simple fact is that they are priced where they believe they can get the most money. Unfortunately what will almost certainly happen is that tuition will actually increase 4k across the board.
This gets better. To get these 4k dollar government handouts, an individual needs to work for 100 hours of community service. So tuition goes up 4k a year meaning people who are just making the cut, like me, are no longer able to afford college. So now I am expected to go to college full-time, work full-time, study for about three hours (I am lazy) a week and perform 100 hours of community service. I find it strange that conservatives are always being compared to Hitler and called racists and made out to be somehow evil, yet with all this evil scheming going on we still have not reinstituted indentured servitude. Man, if I could only remember what amendment to the constitution banned that.
This was the part that made me go nutso for a week. What is wrong with people? This in reality is worse then indentured servitude because most indentured servants were indentured because they had to pay off a debt owed for coming to the new world, in this case I would effectively lose over seventy credits of hard work and money spent. It seems you do not need whips to enslave a college student.
I am sure it will be only a short while before someone tries to pass this off as a 'free market solution'. Why is it liberals believe that a 'free market' always involves massive government interventionism? The last I checked, the free market was supposed to be a bastion for individualism. It seems that now the free market is a gigantic charity auction with more suits then Italy has made in the last half century.
Of course this would be bad on its own but wait theres more! I know, this is one sick game show. The Obama Biden team have come up with yet another way to make this worse. The tax-credit (handout for those of you who have not been paying attention to this scheme) is fully-refundable to any college student. Call me crazy but I think you do not need to be a college student to figure out that if you sign up for one class at a community college then you will rake in a lot of dough. This problem is a bit more iffy as it is possible that Obama may get some restriction on this to reign in government abuse. Wait... never mind; I forgot where we were.
Normally this next paragraph would be the part where I lament that our constitution is no longer being followed but I am sure that train has gone and passed and blew up somewhere in the Gobi desert. No the entire collection of college students will take one in the rear end coming this next fall. If people would just read or maybe just think a little then all our problems could be solved. As long as people go looking for a handout from big brother though this is not going to happen.
It seems to never occur to anyone in college that money does not grow on trees. I always found that strange since presumably they all work for a living. I am a broke college student. I know people are having a hard time keeping up with bills. Still many college students are now rejoicing in their handouts. After the election I manged to sit down and think over this fact. When I mulled over it for a bit, I went temporarily insane because of what I figured out.
First of all this money must come from somewhere so therefor taxes go up, therefor prices go up and job losses go up. None of this is helpful obviously but this is also well covered by many before me. Let us assume for a second that the Obama stumper was right and let us say that the Iraq war would cover all of this. The simple fact is that colleges are businesses. It may seem to many libs to be somehow evil but these schools are not teaching law and economics for their health, they do it for a profit. Every college prices the tuition to restrict and attract certain groups of people. Higher prices tend to hit the high capita families, other colleges target middle classes and still others target upper lower classes. What do you think will happen if you throw 4k into the mix? If colleges really were these ultra accepting institutions that wanted to get more lower income families into college, then they could just lower the tuition cost 4k. The simple fact is that they are priced where they believe they can get the most money. Unfortunately what will almost certainly happen is that tuition will actually increase 4k across the board.
This gets better. To get these 4k dollar government handouts, an individual needs to work for 100 hours of community service. So tuition goes up 4k a year meaning people who are just making the cut, like me, are no longer able to afford college. So now I am expected to go to college full-time, work full-time, study for about three hours (I am lazy) a week and perform 100 hours of community service. I find it strange that conservatives are always being compared to Hitler and called racists and made out to be somehow evil, yet with all this evil scheming going on we still have not reinstituted indentured servitude. Man, if I could only remember what amendment to the constitution banned that.
This was the part that made me go nutso for a week. What is wrong with people? This in reality is worse then indentured servitude because most indentured servants were indentured because they had to pay off a debt owed for coming to the new world, in this case I would effectively lose over seventy credits of hard work and money spent. It seems you do not need whips to enslave a college student.
I am sure it will be only a short while before someone tries to pass this off as a 'free market solution'. Why is it liberals believe that a 'free market' always involves massive government interventionism? The last I checked, the free market was supposed to be a bastion for individualism. It seems that now the free market is a gigantic charity auction with more suits then Italy has made in the last half century.
Of course this would be bad on its own but wait theres more! I know, this is one sick game show. The Obama Biden team have come up with yet another way to make this worse. The tax-credit (handout for those of you who have not been paying attention to this scheme) is fully-refundable to any college student. Call me crazy but I think you do not need to be a college student to figure out that if you sign up for one class at a community college then you will rake in a lot of dough. This problem is a bit more iffy as it is possible that Obama may get some restriction on this to reign in government abuse. Wait... never mind; I forgot where we were.
Normally this next paragraph would be the part where I lament that our constitution is no longer being followed but I am sure that train has gone and passed and blew up somewhere in the Gobi desert. No the entire collection of college students will take one in the rear end coming this next fall. If people would just read or maybe just think a little then all our problems could be solved. As long as people go looking for a handout from big brother though this is not going to happen.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
You wanted it and now you have it.
Well there you have it; Obama won. If you’re a lib I am sure your happy, which if your like me, is just plain strange when you think about it. It is like watching a guy with schizophrenia cut off his arm to stop it from hurting him. If you are a lib I am sure your thinking “Oh just another republican ticked off he lost. GET OVER IT. (loser)” My favorite gloating comment came from a guy yesterday night who told me “Get over it and work with us.” No doubt he is all for unity. I, on the other hand, care only about ideology, conservative ideology that is (with some libertarianism thrown in to boot). This means that if Barrack keeps his promises then I could never “work with him”. Sorry, it does not work that way. If I disagree I will straight up tell you. “Working with him” would require going against everything I believe in.
This post isn’t about me being angry. As the title suggests, this is about what you want. You voted for Barrack and now he will be our president on January 20. I will merely be informative about what you have done to yourself. I am sure you won’t believe any of this but keep reading and remember. I told you this will happen. I will state a position you voted for and then show you precisely how you will get it. Enjoy.
“I voted for him because he will finally stop working for the rich and help out the middle class/working poor.”
Certainly he will tax the rich, and every conservative will howl at the idea. Not because we ourselves our rich (technically with my current income I would fall under Obama’s money giveaway), but because it simply is wrong, period. That is right, even if it screws me I don’t believe in taxes above and beyond what it takes to run the country (note: I am only including constitutional duties, not money givaways).
The problem is that he wants to kill the Bush tax cuts which, when implemented, decreased taxes for everyone with taxable income above 6k dollars. The cuts in the 2001 cuts were 3% for anyone in the 28% tax bracket and above and a tax cut of 4.6% on the highest bracket. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001 numbers for individuals, brackets are higher for all other statuses. You can also read the actual document posted by the IRS, though if you have a life (lucky) then you will want to skip it. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/01taxsh.pdf. That is a lot more in depth. Enjoy.)
“The bush tax cuts helped the middle class?” Yes, we have been telling you this for five years. What? You think we are going to lie? Why wouldn’t you make the same assumption about the other side? I don’t have a history of lying to others and most conservatives I know don’t either. To late though so this is what you get if this was your mistake.
Now taxes will increase on everyone. Certainly this will affect the ‘rich’ more but never-the-less it will hit everyone. He is a problem though. The rich can take a hit. If I had 200k and lost ten percent then, well that sucks. If you an the other hand have 35k and lose ten percent then that is the difference between buying a new TV and taking your child out of that jumpstart program for elementary. So say goodbye to your child’s college aspirations, hello McDonalds. It gets worse of course.
The ‘rich’ will want their 10% back. Since they tend to be the class that runs businesses then they will increase prices. For those of you who don’t read economics, that means inflation. Further, they cannot just raise prices forever to combat high costs. No one will by a three dollar banana. So they must reduce costs. If Obama didn’t already say he was going to mandate healthcare insurance then that would probably go. A pay cut would make sense but won’t happen because that too is locked out for any minimum wage job. So if your Richie rich then you will fire people. This means job losses.
“That can’t be true, Obama said he would create jobs.” The fact that you believe that is why people like me are shaking our heads in shame. Taxes NEVER create jobs. “But Obama said he will give tax breaks to those corporations that provide jobs.” Even if he does that it will not be sufficient to counter Obama’s progressive tax that is more then 50%. The tax break would have to be a fifty percent cut on Obama’s own proposed tax increase. This means that even if we were all lying about the Bush tax cuts then the middle class would not do well under Obama. Further people who pay no net taxes (i.e. receive rebates equal to their taxed income) will receive additional checks. Good news if you make less then 25k per year (till the inflation gets them anyway), but everyone else is stuck will the check. Have you figured it out yet?
“I voted for Barrack Obama because the republicans screwed up the economy.”
This is an example of a half-truth. Yes, Bush allowed several measures that increased the national debt to pass. This irritates me as well, but this has little to do with the economy. Why bring it up then? Because libs often do, usually using this as a reason against the Iraq war (front). Although this increase in debt does exist remember, article I section VII states “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”. So this includes budgets. If you think this doesn’t clear the republicans then remember this. During the entire six years of republican congresses the debt increased 2,947,308,345,232.84 but under the last two years of democratic congress the debt has increased 1,891,061,112,953.10. This equates to 490 billion per year for the republicans and 945 billion per year for the democrats. That is nearly double. Even if the Iraq war had never happened the deficit per year would be only 100 billion less. (source http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway)
This really does not matter though since this has little to do with the economy until the printing presses start. However the Community Reinvestment Act is a big cause of our problems. It is the bill that created Fannie and Freddy, and during the Clinton administration they both were told to give out sub-prime loans en mass. Loans to people who cannot pay? Seems to me to be a bad idea but hey, who am I to judge Clinton’s economic ideas? This was forseen for years and ignored by the democratic congress. So now capital is running dry. Combine this with the taxes Obama will increase and we are screwed. (see a pattern?)
“I voted for Barrack Obama because he is pro choice/gay rights/environment etc…”
At least in this case you are voting for an ideology. In the case of abortion I think it is abominable and gay rights (i.e. marrage) I think the solution is a poor one. In fact I have already provided arguments against these so read those then come back.
“I voted for Barrack Obama because he is black and we need a black president.”
The argument for this is always retarded. Either we need to make up for past wrongs or we need to make history. The first one is easy to defeat because if that one is true then we should also elect Kim Jung Il for putting him through all the trouble we put him through with our sanctions. It would also make sense to elect an Islamic, an Indian, an Irishman, a Russian immigrant… see where this goes? Even though we have enslaved an entire people, that is not a sufficient reason to have one as president.
The history making argument goes awry as well. If this is your argument then understand it goes both ways. If Obama becomes a great president (a laughable idea), then he will go down in history books as a great man. You could continue this and say things like “our past wrongs would be righted” (see last paragraph) “Our world and our country will be more diverse” or any other ideas. The ones you choose don’t really matter. If however he is a bad president then he will be infamous. Even if he is a sort of bad president the world will remember him as a disappointment. This taken to its conclusion suggests that all we have done if force every black guy after him to live under his shadow. If he is a good president then hurray, but if he is even a little bad then it will be harder for every successor to get out. So by this logic I would say you only wanted to make it harder on them all. That is a bad idea.
The major point I am trying to raise on the last reason is that you need to pick someone based on their ideology not some superficial trait. It would be as if I picked Paris Hilton. Granted that isn’t entirely as bad a Barrack, after all, she does have a better energy plan the Obama.
Oh well. In two years we can take back congress and in the meantime filibustering is still a slight possibility. Barrack is safe though I have no doubt. Now that the election is over I think I will focus on theory a lot. The big challenge for conservatives will be to educate their friends and family. This isn’t just a war of people, it is a war of ideas, and I think in the grand scheme of things our ideas are better.
This post isn’t about me being angry. As the title suggests, this is about what you want. You voted for Barrack and now he will be our president on January 20. I will merely be informative about what you have done to yourself. I am sure you won’t believe any of this but keep reading and remember. I told you this will happen. I will state a position you voted for and then show you precisely how you will get it. Enjoy.
“I voted for him because he will finally stop working for the rich and help out the middle class/working poor.”
Certainly he will tax the rich, and every conservative will howl at the idea. Not because we ourselves our rich (technically with my current income I would fall under Obama’s money giveaway), but because it simply is wrong, period. That is right, even if it screws me I don’t believe in taxes above and beyond what it takes to run the country (note: I am only including constitutional duties, not money givaways).
The problem is that he wants to kill the Bush tax cuts which, when implemented, decreased taxes for everyone with taxable income above 6k dollars. The cuts in the 2001 cuts were 3% for anyone in the 28% tax bracket and above and a tax cut of 4.6% on the highest bracket. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act_of_2001 numbers for individuals, brackets are higher for all other statuses. You can also read the actual document posted by the IRS, though if you have a life (lucky) then you will want to skip it. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/01taxsh.pdf. That is a lot more in depth. Enjoy.)
“The bush tax cuts helped the middle class?” Yes, we have been telling you this for five years. What? You think we are going to lie? Why wouldn’t you make the same assumption about the other side? I don’t have a history of lying to others and most conservatives I know don’t either. To late though so this is what you get if this was your mistake.
Now taxes will increase on everyone. Certainly this will affect the ‘rich’ more but never-the-less it will hit everyone. He is a problem though. The rich can take a hit. If I had 200k and lost ten percent then, well that sucks. If you an the other hand have 35k and lose ten percent then that is the difference between buying a new TV and taking your child out of that jumpstart program for elementary. So say goodbye to your child’s college aspirations, hello McDonalds. It gets worse of course.
The ‘rich’ will want their 10% back. Since they tend to be the class that runs businesses then they will increase prices. For those of you who don’t read economics, that means inflation. Further, they cannot just raise prices forever to combat high costs. No one will by a three dollar banana. So they must reduce costs. If Obama didn’t already say he was going to mandate healthcare insurance then that would probably go. A pay cut would make sense but won’t happen because that too is locked out for any minimum wage job. So if your Richie rich then you will fire people. This means job losses.
“That can’t be true, Obama said he would create jobs.” The fact that you believe that is why people like me are shaking our heads in shame. Taxes NEVER create jobs. “But Obama said he will give tax breaks to those corporations that provide jobs.” Even if he does that it will not be sufficient to counter Obama’s progressive tax that is more then 50%. The tax break would have to be a fifty percent cut on Obama’s own proposed tax increase. This means that even if we were all lying about the Bush tax cuts then the middle class would not do well under Obama. Further people who pay no net taxes (i.e. receive rebates equal to their taxed income) will receive additional checks. Good news if you make less then 25k per year (till the inflation gets them anyway), but everyone else is stuck will the check. Have you figured it out yet?
“I voted for Barrack Obama because the republicans screwed up the economy.”
This is an example of a half-truth. Yes, Bush allowed several measures that increased the national debt to pass. This irritates me as well, but this has little to do with the economy. Why bring it up then? Because libs often do, usually using this as a reason against the Iraq war (front). Although this increase in debt does exist remember, article I section VII states “All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives”. So this includes budgets. If you think this doesn’t clear the republicans then remember this. During the entire six years of republican congresses the debt increased 2,947,308,345,232.84 but under the last two years of democratic congress the debt has increased 1,891,061,112,953.10. This equates to 490 billion per year for the republicans and 945 billion per year for the democrats. That is nearly double. Even if the Iraq war had never happened the deficit per year would be only 100 billion less. (source http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/NPGateway)
This really does not matter though since this has little to do with the economy until the printing presses start. However the Community Reinvestment Act is a big cause of our problems. It is the bill that created Fannie and Freddy, and during the Clinton administration they both were told to give out sub-prime loans en mass. Loans to people who cannot pay? Seems to me to be a bad idea but hey, who am I to judge Clinton’s economic ideas? This was forseen for years and ignored by the democratic congress. So now capital is running dry. Combine this with the taxes Obama will increase and we are screwed. (see a pattern?)
“I voted for Barrack Obama because he is pro choice/gay rights/environment etc…”
At least in this case you are voting for an ideology. In the case of abortion I think it is abominable and gay rights (i.e. marrage) I think the solution is a poor one. In fact I have already provided arguments against these so read those then come back.
“I voted for Barrack Obama because he is black and we need a black president.”
The argument for this is always retarded. Either we need to make up for past wrongs or we need to make history. The first one is easy to defeat because if that one is true then we should also elect Kim Jung Il for putting him through all the trouble we put him through with our sanctions. It would also make sense to elect an Islamic, an Indian, an Irishman, a Russian immigrant… see where this goes? Even though we have enslaved an entire people, that is not a sufficient reason to have one as president.
The history making argument goes awry as well. If this is your argument then understand it goes both ways. If Obama becomes a great president (a laughable idea), then he will go down in history books as a great man. You could continue this and say things like “our past wrongs would be righted” (see last paragraph) “Our world and our country will be more diverse” or any other ideas. The ones you choose don’t really matter. If however he is a bad president then he will be infamous. Even if he is a sort of bad president the world will remember him as a disappointment. This taken to its conclusion suggests that all we have done if force every black guy after him to live under his shadow. If he is a good president then hurray, but if he is even a little bad then it will be harder for every successor to get out. So by this logic I would say you only wanted to make it harder on them all. That is a bad idea.
The major point I am trying to raise on the last reason is that you need to pick someone based on their ideology not some superficial trait. It would be as if I picked Paris Hilton. Granted that isn’t entirely as bad a Barrack, after all, she does have a better energy plan the Obama.
Oh well. In two years we can take back congress and in the meantime filibustering is still a slight possibility. Barrack is safe though I have no doubt. Now that the election is over I think I will focus on theory a lot. The big challenge for conservatives will be to educate their friends and family. This isn’t just a war of people, it is a war of ideas, and I think in the grand scheme of things our ideas are better.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Even crazy glue can't keep his trap shut.
I bet Obama’s campaign advisors are searching for a gag that will effectively muffle his speaking. I don’t think it would help in this case though. If you haven’t heard, then let me be the first to tell you about Obama’s latest gaff. This one is about seven years old.
In 2001 Obama gave an interview with the local NPR station WBEZ in Chicago. This of course being before he was planning to run for US senator or president, he spoke his mind as liberally as he could. There were many wonderful quotes from this. A few examples are such as these.
“the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.”
“It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf”
“one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”
Each of these quotes by themselves is scary. The second is my favorite though. Obama there was trying to state that the constitution does not define what the government is supposed to do for you. I think this is proof positive that Obama has ADHD. He was a professor of constitutional law in Chicago and he couldn’t even bother to read a couple pages in to see Article I section VIII? Maybe he skipped that, and Article II section III. This is somewhat amazing at first but take a look at the rest of this tape that surfaced on Youtube and other sites and it becomes apparent what he means.
The first quote was his reasons for believing that the Warren court was not really that radical. This was the same court that banned prayer in school but hey, who am I to judge. Those evil Christians had it coming. Naturally this is a very important quote as of late. After all, he has been speaking of redistributing the wealth. Some claim this means nothing, but in reality context is everything, and the context is his belief that we should re-interpret the constitution. If you do not believe that then just read quote number two.
Later in the tape he was asked about how to bring about this change. (Do you understand now why change isn’t always good?) He stated that he did not feel optimistic about these types of changes being made at the court level. (i.e. he doesn’t think anyone could get away with it.) However he never said it couldn’t be done legislatively. Of course it could be done legislatively; if you read the constitution then you will know that. The question is should it be done, and unfortunately he seems to answer that question for us today and in that interview.
This certainly came at a bad time for Obama. It has been only a few weeks after Joe the Plummer reared his head and the ripple was still going. Now this causes even more people to look at him and see that dreaded S word on his head. He is already considered foreign. The only thing he really had going for him was that many people falsely believe that McCain would just be more Bush. This fear is now being combated with a bigger fear; the fear of socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism.
To this I ask the question who is really surprised that Barrack believes this? Ideas of socialism permeate his speeches, radicalism drips from every word he spews from his mouth. Are people really this blind or do they want so bad to teach the Republican Party a lesson that they are willing to destroy the country?
His pastor subscribes to black liberation theology, a philosophy derived largely from socialism. William Ares (known lovingly as the fireworks specialist. He is available for parties and insurrections) is a radical from the 60s. Normally that would be all you need to know to know Ayres is bad but it is worth noting that he was also a bomber and a self described communist. These comments are unfair though. After all, lots of us detonate bombs in our capital. It’s a game we play called “guess what kind of timer I used this time.”
“But these are all past associations, they mean nothing.” Even allowing that, doesn’t Obama tie in really well with Obama? I think that association works great. People are starting to wake up and figure out what is going on. Unfortunately early voting has been going on for a bit so this revelation will have a reduced effect.
His third quote that I pulled was by far the scariest. Sure, the first one smacks of socialism and the second one shows just how little he knows about the constitution, but the third one calls for action “on the ground”. If you substituted “political and community organizing and activities” with “Proletariat organizing and activities” then you have a near verbatim quote of Marx and Engels. Revolution is what that one is about, specifically with regard to “redistributive change.” His own website tells you that you must ask not about what change he can bring but the change you can bring. That is as fascist/socialist as you can get without wearing the colors.
“Your being paranoid.” Maybe, then again there is a reason we have more then one country in shambles because of these ideas. Countries like the USSR, Cuba, Italy, and Germany don’t convince people to help them out by promising gulags. It is always some form of Utopia that is promised. Barrack wants us to believe that if we vote for him then the middle class will prosper and the ‘evil’ rich will be brought under the reins of the government. Health care will be affordable (‘free’) and everyone will be given a fair shake. He doesn’t mention that we will also be under his thumb and that the fairness of our shake is entirely up to him, congress and bureaucrats. If you believe that he would never abuse his power like that then look at Russia under Lenin. Even if he were incorruptible then would you want to bet that the next guy will be also?
The fact is that the people are starting to see him for what he is. This is a problem because his real self is just plain scary. The polls are beginning to reflect this as the AP shows McCain just one point behind, well within the 2.5% margin of error. Well Halloween is on Friday so maybe Obama will go as himself. That might scare the children though.
In 2001 Obama gave an interview with the local NPR station WBEZ in Chicago. This of course being before he was planning to run for US senator or president, he spoke his mind as liberally as he could. There were many wonderful quotes from this. A few examples are such as these.
“the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society.”
“It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted, and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf”
“one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”
Each of these quotes by themselves is scary. The second is my favorite though. Obama there was trying to state that the constitution does not define what the government is supposed to do for you. I think this is proof positive that Obama has ADHD. He was a professor of constitutional law in Chicago and he couldn’t even bother to read a couple pages in to see Article I section VIII? Maybe he skipped that, and Article II section III. This is somewhat amazing at first but take a look at the rest of this tape that surfaced on Youtube and other sites and it becomes apparent what he means.
The first quote was his reasons for believing that the Warren court was not really that radical. This was the same court that banned prayer in school but hey, who am I to judge. Those evil Christians had it coming. Naturally this is a very important quote as of late. After all, he has been speaking of redistributing the wealth. Some claim this means nothing, but in reality context is everything, and the context is his belief that we should re-interpret the constitution. If you do not believe that then just read quote number two.
Later in the tape he was asked about how to bring about this change. (Do you understand now why change isn’t always good?) He stated that he did not feel optimistic about these types of changes being made at the court level. (i.e. he doesn’t think anyone could get away with it.) However he never said it couldn’t be done legislatively. Of course it could be done legislatively; if you read the constitution then you will know that. The question is should it be done, and unfortunately he seems to answer that question for us today and in that interview.
This certainly came at a bad time for Obama. It has been only a few weeks after Joe the Plummer reared his head and the ripple was still going. Now this causes even more people to look at him and see that dreaded S word on his head. He is already considered foreign. The only thing he really had going for him was that many people falsely believe that McCain would just be more Bush. This fear is now being combated with a bigger fear; the fear of socialism and all other forms of totalitarianism.
To this I ask the question who is really surprised that Barrack believes this? Ideas of socialism permeate his speeches, radicalism drips from every word he spews from his mouth. Are people really this blind or do they want so bad to teach the Republican Party a lesson that they are willing to destroy the country?
His pastor subscribes to black liberation theology, a philosophy derived largely from socialism. William Ares (known lovingly as the fireworks specialist. He is available for parties and insurrections) is a radical from the 60s. Normally that would be all you need to know to know Ayres is bad but it is worth noting that he was also a bomber and a self described communist. These comments are unfair though. After all, lots of us detonate bombs in our capital. It’s a game we play called “guess what kind of timer I used this time.”
“But these are all past associations, they mean nothing.” Even allowing that, doesn’t Obama tie in really well with Obama? I think that association works great. People are starting to wake up and figure out what is going on. Unfortunately early voting has been going on for a bit so this revelation will have a reduced effect.
His third quote that I pulled was by far the scariest. Sure, the first one smacks of socialism and the second one shows just how little he knows about the constitution, but the third one calls for action “on the ground”. If you substituted “political and community organizing and activities” with “Proletariat organizing and activities” then you have a near verbatim quote of Marx and Engels. Revolution is what that one is about, specifically with regard to “redistributive change.” His own website tells you that you must ask not about what change he can bring but the change you can bring. That is as fascist/socialist as you can get without wearing the colors.
“Your being paranoid.” Maybe, then again there is a reason we have more then one country in shambles because of these ideas. Countries like the USSR, Cuba, Italy, and Germany don’t convince people to help them out by promising gulags. It is always some form of Utopia that is promised. Barrack wants us to believe that if we vote for him then the middle class will prosper and the ‘evil’ rich will be brought under the reins of the government. Health care will be affordable (‘free’) and everyone will be given a fair shake. He doesn’t mention that we will also be under his thumb and that the fairness of our shake is entirely up to him, congress and bureaucrats. If you believe that he would never abuse his power like that then look at Russia under Lenin. Even if he were incorruptible then would you want to bet that the next guy will be also?
The fact is that the people are starting to see him for what he is. This is a problem because his real self is just plain scary. The polls are beginning to reflect this as the AP shows McCain just one point behind, well within the 2.5% margin of error. Well Halloween is on Friday so maybe Obama will go as himself. That might scare the children though.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
The ACORN dosn't fall far from the tree.
We have more talk of voter fraud this election, and this time it is the dems who are involved. I am not saying that the dems don’t usually commit voter fraud, (after all, I need to give them their due) just that this one is definitely them. ACORN, which stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, has been singled out for a fraud investigation in which several states, including my own, have been seeing enormous amounts of fake registrations. These states include Wisconsin, New Mexico, Indiana and Nevada. I have also heard of Ohio being yet another state in this laundry list of targeted fraud.
Targeted I say? Well I would say that when immense voter fraud ‘happens’ to be rampant in swing states, and this fraud can be traced to a single group, then we have sufficient evidence of a group of people trying to sway an election. I thought it was us republicans who tried to steal elections. Everyone still talks about the alleged voter fraud in Florida in 2000. You know, boxes falling off trucks and polling machines being tampered with in heavy democrat counties. (Of course since this all happened in Florida we could chock all that up to, well, Florida. No offense to Floridians of course. It isn’t your fault that your bureaucracy is filled with incompetence.)
In reality this isn’t a surprise to anyone. Even in 2000, the election had numerous attempts to steal the election including not counting the votes of absentee military votes, and this was perpetrated by the dems. In 2004, ACORN was suspected of voter fraud, again. (Source: http://www.epionline.org/news_detail.cfm?rid=171) And no in 2008 we have yet more ACORN buisness. (Vegas source: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/07/acorn-vegas-office-raided-voter-fraud-investigation/ CNN secondary source: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/10/cnn-acorn-fraud-and-ties-to-obama/)
As that last source indicates, Obama is tied with ACORN. It appears that he has donated $800,000 for voter drives. I find it interesting that he claims that he had nothing to do with this at all, yet the same voter drives he donated money for are the same ones committing fraud. Obama, however, claims that he had nothing to do with this. He isn’t even president yet and he already has Nixon beat for corrupting politics. Perhaps I am wrong though. Maybe dead people really are rising from the dead and voting for him; he is called the messiah after all.
Of course an ACORN lawyer had this to say. “We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes.” (also from the hotair.com source) No…. we don’t want to do that. We want to encourage as many people as possible to vote as many times as they like. We, after all, strive for the same kind of accuracy that internet polls give us. He continued “We think that by attacking ACORN that they are going to discourage people who have may have registered with ACORN from voting.” This seems like a laughable claim since half the votes turned in are from ACORN employees. The GOP scare tactics are dazzlingly effective it seems to me. My god, what will we think of next. “Vote McCain or else we will cover your with pet dander!” God help you if your allergic to cats.
Bertha Lewis of ACORN has stated “We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations” (foxnews.com) I am not certain if she meant any fraudulent registrations or just very bad fraudulent registrations. After all, if I was paying a guy to steal an election and he registered the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup, I would probably fire him too. I live in Nevada, trust me, Terrell Owens doesn’t. Things like this almost make me wonder if they wanted to get caught.
But none of this matters. We all know democrats don’t steal elections, republicans do. At least that is what I am told. I seem to be out of touch with my branch of the right wing conspiracy. I have forgotten what horrible plans we have come up with.
No, this is just the normal strategy of the left wing. I wonder if one day they will make powdered instant voter. Obama will be pleased and trust me, if he wins, all will be forgiven for ACORN. It is, after all, what he wants.
Targeted I say? Well I would say that when immense voter fraud ‘happens’ to be rampant in swing states, and this fraud can be traced to a single group, then we have sufficient evidence of a group of people trying to sway an election. I thought it was us republicans who tried to steal elections. Everyone still talks about the alleged voter fraud in Florida in 2000. You know, boxes falling off trucks and polling machines being tampered with in heavy democrat counties. (Of course since this all happened in Florida we could chock all that up to, well, Florida. No offense to Floridians of course. It isn’t your fault that your bureaucracy is filled with incompetence.)
In reality this isn’t a surprise to anyone. Even in 2000, the election had numerous attempts to steal the election including not counting the votes of absentee military votes, and this was perpetrated by the dems. In 2004, ACORN was suspected of voter fraud, again. (Source: http://www.epionline.org/news_detail.cfm?rid=171) And no in 2008 we have yet more ACORN buisness. (Vegas source: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/10/07/acorn-vegas-office-raided-voter-fraud-investigation/ CNN secondary source: http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/10/cnn-acorn-fraud-and-ties-to-obama/)
As that last source indicates, Obama is tied with ACORN. It appears that he has donated $800,000 for voter drives. I find it interesting that he claims that he had nothing to do with this at all, yet the same voter drives he donated money for are the same ones committing fraud. Obama, however, claims that he had nothing to do with this. He isn’t even president yet and he already has Nixon beat for corrupting politics. Perhaps I am wrong though. Maybe dead people really are rising from the dead and voting for him; he is called the messiah after all.
Of course an ACORN lawyer had this to say. “We believe their purpose is to attack ACORN and suppress votes.” (also from the hotair.com source) No…. we don’t want to do that. We want to encourage as many people as possible to vote as many times as they like. We, after all, strive for the same kind of accuracy that internet polls give us. He continued “We think that by attacking ACORN that they are going to discourage people who have may have registered with ACORN from voting.” This seems like a laughable claim since half the votes turned in are from ACORN employees. The GOP scare tactics are dazzlingly effective it seems to me. My god, what will we think of next. “Vote McCain or else we will cover your with pet dander!” God help you if your allergic to cats.
Bertha Lewis of ACORN has stated “We immediately dismiss employees we suspect of submitting fraudulent registrations” (foxnews.com) I am not certain if she meant any fraudulent registrations or just very bad fraudulent registrations. After all, if I was paying a guy to steal an election and he registered the Dallas Cowboys starting lineup, I would probably fire him too. I live in Nevada, trust me, Terrell Owens doesn’t. Things like this almost make me wonder if they wanted to get caught.
But none of this matters. We all know democrats don’t steal elections, republicans do. At least that is what I am told. I seem to be out of touch with my branch of the right wing conspiracy. I have forgotten what horrible plans we have come up with.
No, this is just the normal strategy of the left wing. I wonder if one day they will make powdered instant voter. Obama will be pleased and trust me, if he wins, all will be forgiven for ACORN. It is, after all, what he wants.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Where is the self-destruct button?
I am an idiot. I must be because when I saw the House shoot down the bailout I honestly thought that those representatives were standing on principle. Turns out all they really wanted was some more pork. It was kind of like a Jambalaya from hell. Don’t believe me? Look at the bill yourself. http://banking.senate.gov/public/_files/latestversionAYO08C32_xml.pdf
I look at this crap; The Mental health Parity Act, The Hurricane Ike Disaster Relief, The Secure Rural School and Community Self-determination Plan? No it turns out the real reason we didn’t pass the bailout the first time is because several House members needed an excuse to usurp several banks and loans. “I didn’t vote for the bailout, I voted for the disaster relief.” “No, you see, I really voted on the Mental Health Parity Act. Do you hate the mentally challenged?” I am sick and tired of these creeps covering their own behinds. A well trained sniper would have a hard time taking a shot at their butts. Where are the courageous representatives who stand up and say “No, I will not tolerate this. I will stop you from going beyond your enumerated power and stop this bill.”
If you look at the votes on this bill on congress.org, then you will see those that, hopefully, did just that. Unfortunately only the few seemed to pay attention to those pesky words in that irritating document our founders mistakenly wrote. I don’t doubt that if our founders had another go at it John Adams would have said “Hey, you know what we should add in here? We should add something like ‘and the congress shall have power to impose their will upon the markets in times that shall be determined my congress.’” On the bright side, Jefferson’s spinning body could be harnessed for some green energy.
If they were not so isolationist, I just might switch my registration to Libertarian. Unfortunately the Republican party has been taken over by cowards and moderates. (Moderate is liberal speak for a Democrat who is quite fond of elephants.) Most people at the grass roots are happy for the mere existence of Sarah Palin. Unfortunately her existence does me little good if McCain insists on her reading from scripts.
However do not get me wrong. Our ideas are not dead. The fact that I am posting this up here on the internet proves that. Trickledown theory is still popular, collectivism is still opposed harshly and the peaceniks still tick most people off. Conservatives are not dead, Conservatism is not dead. The party though, it is crashing. Politics have taken over and instead of standing up for what we believe in, the politicians stand up for what will get them re-elected.
These people are starting to disappoint me. It seems that there is little chance of people like me just getting rid of these guys the old fashioned way. So join me and let’s find that self-destruct button. Maybe we could start all over again, but most likely not. Until the Republican party grows a backbone we wont be able to do this our most sacred duty, which is get these guys out of office.
I look at this crap; The Mental health Parity Act, The Hurricane Ike Disaster Relief, The Secure Rural School and Community Self-determination Plan? No it turns out the real reason we didn’t pass the bailout the first time is because several House members needed an excuse to usurp several banks and loans. “I didn’t vote for the bailout, I voted for the disaster relief.” “No, you see, I really voted on the Mental Health Parity Act. Do you hate the mentally challenged?” I am sick and tired of these creeps covering their own behinds. A well trained sniper would have a hard time taking a shot at their butts. Where are the courageous representatives who stand up and say “No, I will not tolerate this. I will stop you from going beyond your enumerated power and stop this bill.”
If you look at the votes on this bill on congress.org, then you will see those that, hopefully, did just that. Unfortunately only the few seemed to pay attention to those pesky words in that irritating document our founders mistakenly wrote. I don’t doubt that if our founders had another go at it John Adams would have said “Hey, you know what we should add in here? We should add something like ‘and the congress shall have power to impose their will upon the markets in times that shall be determined my congress.’” On the bright side, Jefferson’s spinning body could be harnessed for some green energy.
If they were not so isolationist, I just might switch my registration to Libertarian. Unfortunately the Republican party has been taken over by cowards and moderates. (Moderate is liberal speak for a Democrat who is quite fond of elephants.) Most people at the grass roots are happy for the mere existence of Sarah Palin. Unfortunately her existence does me little good if McCain insists on her reading from scripts.
However do not get me wrong. Our ideas are not dead. The fact that I am posting this up here on the internet proves that. Trickledown theory is still popular, collectivism is still opposed harshly and the peaceniks still tick most people off. Conservatives are not dead, Conservatism is not dead. The party though, it is crashing. Politics have taken over and instead of standing up for what we believe in, the politicians stand up for what will get them re-elected.
These people are starting to disappoint me. It seems that there is little chance of people like me just getting rid of these guys the old fashioned way. So join me and let’s find that self-destruct button. Maybe we could start all over again, but most likely not. Until the Republican party grows a backbone we wont be able to do this our most sacred duty, which is get these guys out of office.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Fannie Pack-age
Congratulations, you are eligible to lose about 1.5 to 5k dollars. With the numbers still rising on the Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac bailouts we can be rest assured that we will be paying the bill. Let’s forget for a moment the ignorance required to believe this is a good idea; let’s ask the question "How is this even constitutional?”
There is nothing, nothing in the constitution that allows this. What is this you ask? Well literally buying three companies (Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and AIG). The government will get the stock majority of these three companies and essentially run them into the ground. Apparently a bunch of House Dems took us seriously when we told them to “try running their own company”. The federal government is supposed to dismantle the failed corporations once the bailout is complete but this assumes the government actually does what it is supposed to do. Sorry if I don’t believe their sincerity, but then again this same government said Social Security is to be used only for Social Security.
Understand that when the government says you will bailout Fannie and Freddie (no I did mean you); it means the debt incurred by the “inevitable” bailout. I wonder what Biden would say about this. Whether or not he supports this is probably determined by how it affects Amtrak. No this is a problem for Barrack Obama. He has received the second largest amount from PACs and individuals associated with Fanny and Freddy totaling $126,349. (individuals includes employees of those two companies. Data courtesy of OpenSecrets.org)
This debt incurred will start as half a trillion to, some say, as high as 1.8 trillion dollars but we have to pay interest on that sum too. In the end we will all bite this big one. Not because we have to or even should, but because the government has once again started playing SimCity with the market. Somehow throwing money at the problem seems like the opposite of what we need to do.
Don’t get me wrong either, this once again is a bi-partisan effort to screw us all. G.W. himself said we ‘need’ to do this. Seems like every time I can start to be happy again about him being in office he says something stupid. McCain has also bought into this dogma. God save us all.
I suggest we forget this all. Let every company that is going to fail do just that, fail. Sure, the stock market will take one hell of a hit. Many people will find themselves in trouble but in the end the stock market will strike back strong and most people will get their assets in order. However if we go down this path, which believe me we will, then the entire U.S. economy will suffer for it. The corporations will suffer from higher taxes and our countries credit will crumble further. Inflation will definitely occur and in the end someone will make millions writing a book about how we might have made a mistake. Well someone has to benefit from this.
There is nothing, nothing in the constitution that allows this. What is this you ask? Well literally buying three companies (Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac and AIG). The government will get the stock majority of these three companies and essentially run them into the ground. Apparently a bunch of House Dems took us seriously when we told them to “try running their own company”. The federal government is supposed to dismantle the failed corporations once the bailout is complete but this assumes the government actually does what it is supposed to do. Sorry if I don’t believe their sincerity, but then again this same government said Social Security is to be used only for Social Security.
Understand that when the government says you will bailout Fannie and Freddie (no I did mean you); it means the debt incurred by the “inevitable” bailout. I wonder what Biden would say about this. Whether or not he supports this is probably determined by how it affects Amtrak. No this is a problem for Barrack Obama. He has received the second largest amount from PACs and individuals associated with Fanny and Freddy totaling $126,349. (individuals includes employees of those two companies. Data courtesy of OpenSecrets.org)
This debt incurred will start as half a trillion to, some say, as high as 1.8 trillion dollars but we have to pay interest on that sum too. In the end we will all bite this big one. Not because we have to or even should, but because the government has once again started playing SimCity with the market. Somehow throwing money at the problem seems like the opposite of what we need to do.
Don’t get me wrong either, this once again is a bi-partisan effort to screw us all. G.W. himself said we ‘need’ to do this. Seems like every time I can start to be happy again about him being in office he says something stupid. McCain has also bought into this dogma. God save us all.
I suggest we forget this all. Let every company that is going to fail do just that, fail. Sure, the stock market will take one hell of a hit. Many people will find themselves in trouble but in the end the stock market will strike back strong and most people will get their assets in order. However if we go down this path, which believe me we will, then the entire U.S. economy will suffer for it. The corporations will suffer from higher taxes and our countries credit will crumble further. Inflation will definitely occur and in the end someone will make millions writing a book about how we might have made a mistake. Well someone has to benefit from this.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Margret Sanger would be proud.
While I was gone, lost in the first weeks of school, McCain picked his VP nominee. Believe me, everyone was surprised. I mean seriously, Alaska? Well Sarah Palin turned out to be a terrific choice. Not only is she both a fiscal and a social conservative, but she has the kind of following that makes even Obama do a double take.
This post though, isn't about Sarah Palin. As the title would suggest, this is about the abortion issue. Sarah Palin has given birth to a wonderful baby with Down Syndrome. The kicker is that she knew about the disability before she actually gave birth to the young one. This is compared to the 90% of expecting mothers who usually abort. So the left-wing media congratulated her with hit pieces and numerous blog insults. After all, what kind of evil villain would allow baby Trig to live!?
Lets face it, the biggest problem for the Obama-maniacs is that not only is she female, but she is conservative. STOP THE PRESSES!!! GET THE POLICE AND ARREST HER BEFORE SHE SPEAKS HER MIND!!! How dare she not fall in line with the NOW Loons. NOW, of course, is attacking Palin like Ted Kennedy attacks a bottle of Jack. Planned Parenthood is also not a fan of hers. I say come and get her, you baby-killing loons.
This boils down to the Pro-Abortion... sorry Pro-Womyn's Health Choicers. The argument against abortion goes like this. Murder is defined as the killing of an innocent person by another person. There are three ways to try to define aborted fetuses (aka the Alpo secret ingredient) outside of the definition of murder. Either they are not innocent, "That baby killed my Ma'mah" they are not people (this would take one heck of a deranged person to make that argument) or they cannot be killed. The last one is the most popular argument. By defining life as starting at x number of weeks past conception we can con the justice system into not tossing these baby killers in prison. The argument is mostly arbitrary, and, in order to hide this fact, many words like Nazi are tossed around with sobs about raped women.
The fact is that once you get to the arbitrary nature of the law it becomes obvious just how dangerous this is. Say someone gets in and states that all Morons and Idiots should be sterilized. This might sound extreme but someone named Margaret Sanger suggested just that and was somewhat successful at it. So obviously we need a definition that is not up for arbitration. The problem is that most definitions lead to horrible consequences.
Here are some examples. If we define life as being a complete human (thereby allowing the exclusion of fetuses) then the definition of “complete” comes under fire. Depending on what you mean by complete, life starts at either conception (complete DNA) and going out to months out and perhaps even after birth. Certainly many of the Womyn would agree with most of that. “Complete”, though, can be pushed even further. If I stated that the mentally deficient are not “complete”, then they are not alive. Imagine an Orwellian world of non-persons and suddenly this seems to make sense. "But no one would ever do that!" Wrong!! It has been done before by progressives back in the early 1900's. Many people today still hold these crazy views.
Another example is what if we say life begins once they can feel pain (Makes sense if you are "humane"). Suddenly lepers would need to hide to avoid a parade of murderous thugs that would come after them. How ‘bout life begins once the fetus is human-like? This might push life to three months after conception, but runs into more problems. What is human-like? Is human like somewhat human? If I had MS would I be human? If I had AIDS and suddenly did not have an immune system, would that lack of an immune system make me less human? What if I was born without a pinky toe? With an eleventh finger? What if Darwin or Nietche rose from the dead and suggested that the "savage races" were not really human? (Can you tell I don't like Eugenics yet?)
Let’s face it, not only is conception the best, and by best I mean most humane, place to begin, but science and religion agree. I mean come on; I thought you guys liked science. The definition of life, according to science, is so broad that it encompasses viruses and bacteria. To say that human fetuses are not living is to say they are less that the bacteria we wash off our hands.
"But what about cases of rape? Are you going to allow a woman to live with that horrible burden?"
First, I would NEVER consider a child brought into the world as anything but a miracle, possibly excluding Michael Moore. Even granting this position, why not give the child up for adoption? If you cannot take care of a child, could you not at least put up with the burden for a couple months? Let’s assume we allowed children who were rape babies be aborted, then how far can you take this? What about a year old? If a mother smothered her child in its crib would we let her off because it was a rape baby?
"It's not the same thing." YES IT IS!!! That is the point. There is no line you can draw past conception where these fuzzy details can't be argued.
Life begins at conception. Simple and to the point. It makes sense. Not only does life begin there, but it is the only scientific point where life can begin. At that moment the embryo will one day grow into a baby capable of living outside of the womb. At that point it is possible for the baby to become what it was meant to be. Even excluding God from the picture you must come to this conclusion. At the point of conception the DNA is complete and has formed the basis of human life.
This fact will not stop the Now morons from attacking Sarah Palin, but at least we can conclude that their arguments are illogical. So I give a toast to you, Rosie, the Womyn of NOW and Planned Parenthood. A few million more abortions and you may beat the Nazis by a factor of ten. I have no doubt that Margaret Sanger would be proud of your accomplishments.
This post though, isn't about Sarah Palin. As the title would suggest, this is about the abortion issue. Sarah Palin has given birth to a wonderful baby with Down Syndrome. The kicker is that she knew about the disability before she actually gave birth to the young one. This is compared to the 90% of expecting mothers who usually abort. So the left-wing media congratulated her with hit pieces and numerous blog insults. After all, what kind of evil villain would allow baby Trig to live!?
Lets face it, the biggest problem for the Obama-maniacs is that not only is she female, but she is conservative. STOP THE PRESSES!!! GET THE POLICE AND ARREST HER BEFORE SHE SPEAKS HER MIND!!! How dare she not fall in line with the NOW Loons. NOW, of course, is attacking Palin like Ted Kennedy attacks a bottle of Jack. Planned Parenthood is also not a fan of hers. I say come and get her, you baby-killing loons.
This boils down to the Pro-Abortion... sorry Pro-Womyn's Health Choicers. The argument against abortion goes like this. Murder is defined as the killing of an innocent person by another person. There are three ways to try to define aborted fetuses (aka the Alpo secret ingredient) outside of the definition of murder. Either they are not innocent, "That baby killed my Ma'mah" they are not people (this would take one heck of a deranged person to make that argument) or they cannot be killed. The last one is the most popular argument. By defining life as starting at x number of weeks past conception we can con the justice system into not tossing these baby killers in prison. The argument is mostly arbitrary, and, in order to hide this fact, many words like Nazi are tossed around with sobs about raped women.
The fact is that once you get to the arbitrary nature of the law it becomes obvious just how dangerous this is. Say someone gets in and states that all Morons and Idiots should be sterilized. This might sound extreme but someone named Margaret Sanger suggested just that and was somewhat successful at it. So obviously we need a definition that is not up for arbitration. The problem is that most definitions lead to horrible consequences.
Here are some examples. If we define life as being a complete human (thereby allowing the exclusion of fetuses) then the definition of “complete” comes under fire. Depending on what you mean by complete, life starts at either conception (complete DNA) and going out to months out and perhaps even after birth. Certainly many of the Womyn would agree with most of that. “Complete”, though, can be pushed even further. If I stated that the mentally deficient are not “complete”, then they are not alive. Imagine an Orwellian world of non-persons and suddenly this seems to make sense. "But no one would ever do that!" Wrong!! It has been done before by progressives back in the early 1900's. Many people today still hold these crazy views.
Another example is what if we say life begins once they can feel pain (Makes sense if you are "humane"). Suddenly lepers would need to hide to avoid a parade of murderous thugs that would come after them. How ‘bout life begins once the fetus is human-like? This might push life to three months after conception, but runs into more problems. What is human-like? Is human like somewhat human? If I had MS would I be human? If I had AIDS and suddenly did not have an immune system, would that lack of an immune system make me less human? What if I was born without a pinky toe? With an eleventh finger? What if Darwin or Nietche rose from the dead and suggested that the "savage races" were not really human? (Can you tell I don't like Eugenics yet?)
Let’s face it, not only is conception the best, and by best I mean most humane, place to begin, but science and religion agree. I mean come on; I thought you guys liked science. The definition of life, according to science, is so broad that it encompasses viruses and bacteria. To say that human fetuses are not living is to say they are less that the bacteria we wash off our hands.
"But what about cases of rape? Are you going to allow a woman to live with that horrible burden?"
First, I would NEVER consider a child brought into the world as anything but a miracle, possibly excluding Michael Moore. Even granting this position, why not give the child up for adoption? If you cannot take care of a child, could you not at least put up with the burden for a couple months? Let’s assume we allowed children who were rape babies be aborted, then how far can you take this? What about a year old? If a mother smothered her child in its crib would we let her off because it was a rape baby?
"It's not the same thing." YES IT IS!!! That is the point. There is no line you can draw past conception where these fuzzy details can't be argued.
Life begins at conception. Simple and to the point. It makes sense. Not only does life begin there, but it is the only scientific point where life can begin. At that moment the embryo will one day grow into a baby capable of living outside of the womb. At that point it is possible for the baby to become what it was meant to be. Even excluding God from the picture you must come to this conclusion. At the point of conception the DNA is complete and has formed the basis of human life.
This fact will not stop the Now morons from attacking Sarah Palin, but at least we can conclude that their arguments are illogical. So I give a toast to you, Rosie, the Womyn of NOW and Planned Parenthood. A few million more abortions and you may beat the Nazis by a factor of ten. I have no doubt that Margaret Sanger would be proud of your accomplishments.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Back To School Obama
It has been almost a month since my last post. The reason is that I am currently dealing with the massive preparations involved in getting set up for my next two semesters at college. However, just because I am busy in my little bubble does not mean that the world has stood still.
Last week McCain and Obama had their first debate of sorts. It isn't a debate really, but more of a series of questions asked to both of them in two hours. Barak Obama, trying to prove he isn't a radical as the "Vicious Right" says he is, gave nothing but noncommittal answers the whole interview. This made him appear, well, noncommittal. This isn't good, as it is only a short step away from weak and can even worsen the flip flopping accusation he is already suffering from.
Later when McCain answered the same questions, McCain was more direct with every answer. This at best (for Obama) does not cause McCain to suffer the same problems Barrack is suffering from. At worst, it even can make McCain look strong.
(For those who did not watch this you may still find the unedited video on C-Span. If you prefer edited versions with snarky commentary then I am sure You Tube has more than enough to satisfy.)
I do not often relish in helping out competition and really am not fond of doing the same for someone as socialistic as Obama but here are a few tips for not doing this again.
1. Keep to your issues or, at the very least state, your false positions on your issues. You may be called a flip-flopper but that is eternally preferable to being called weak.
2. Give straight answers. If the ground you stand on is wishy-washy, then your ground may very well crumble into a vast landslide.
3. Stop pissing off your base and this goes for McCain, too. The more you stop talking the talk, the less likely your base will support the undecideds you might get.
4. Stand on your principles. A lie is still a lie and the American people are not stupid enough to simply accept anything you tell them as being the truth. The more you stray away from your positions in the primary the more people are going to resent you.
Also on another note, Stop Playing the Race Card, Obama! No one buys it. In a day and age when I would have to literally go look for a single racist, I am not going to buy that. There is this vast swath of voters and Republicans who want nothing more than to stop you from becoming president for many other reasons. Unless, of course, by racist you are including anti-socialists as well.
I don't expect anyone in the Obama campaign to read this or even anyone to read this, but I had to say it. Even if someone from the Obama campaign did read this, I doubt they would take heed. They know their ideas are unpopular. An idiot would take just a moment of thought to arrive to the conclusion that their ideas ultimately lead to dictator ships or as Jonah Goldberg argues, Fascism. Democrats know this, so their ideas are either prettied up or hidden completely. Just as well, I certainly hope Obama loses, then we only have Hillary to deal with in four years. Although I hate to say it, I think Hillary would make a less destructive president then Obama. Now if you excuse me, that last comment makes me want to take a shower.
Last week McCain and Obama had their first debate of sorts. It isn't a debate really, but more of a series of questions asked to both of them in two hours. Barak Obama, trying to prove he isn't a radical as the "Vicious Right" says he is, gave nothing but noncommittal answers the whole interview. This made him appear, well, noncommittal. This isn't good, as it is only a short step away from weak and can even worsen the flip flopping accusation he is already suffering from.
Later when McCain answered the same questions, McCain was more direct with every answer. This at best (for Obama) does not cause McCain to suffer the same problems Barrack is suffering from. At worst, it even can make McCain look strong.
(For those who did not watch this you may still find the unedited video on C-Span. If you prefer edited versions with snarky commentary then I am sure You Tube has more than enough to satisfy.)
I do not often relish in helping out competition and really am not fond of doing the same for someone as socialistic as Obama but here are a few tips for not doing this again.
1. Keep to your issues or, at the very least state, your false positions on your issues. You may be called a flip-flopper but that is eternally preferable to being called weak.
2. Give straight answers. If the ground you stand on is wishy-washy, then your ground may very well crumble into a vast landslide.
3. Stop pissing off your base and this goes for McCain, too. The more you stop talking the talk, the less likely your base will support the undecideds you might get.
4. Stand on your principles. A lie is still a lie and the American people are not stupid enough to simply accept anything you tell them as being the truth. The more you stray away from your positions in the primary the more people are going to resent you.
Also on another note, Stop Playing the Race Card, Obama! No one buys it. In a day and age when I would have to literally go look for a single racist, I am not going to buy that. There is this vast swath of voters and Republicans who want nothing more than to stop you from becoming president for many other reasons. Unless, of course, by racist you are including anti-socialists as well.
I don't expect anyone in the Obama campaign to read this or even anyone to read this, but I had to say it. Even if someone from the Obama campaign did read this, I doubt they would take heed. They know their ideas are unpopular. An idiot would take just a moment of thought to arrive to the conclusion that their ideas ultimately lead to dictator ships or as Jonah Goldberg argues, Fascism. Democrats know this, so their ideas are either prettied up or hidden completely. Just as well, I certainly hope Obama loses, then we only have Hillary to deal with in four years. Although I hate to say it, I think Hillary would make a less destructive president then Obama. Now if you excuse me, that last comment makes me want to take a shower.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Censorship gone wild!!!
I think Keith Olberman needs to stick to football. In another interview with Scott Mclellan, Keith Olberman came to this startling conclusion, “Fox News is biased”. I won't necessarily disagree here, it is hard for Fox News or any News channel to be unbiased but this seems like a case of the pot calling the kettle black, only the pot is "blacker" than the kettle. Numerous liberal pundits are complaining that shows like The O'Reilly Factor and Sean Hannity are parroting the White house talking points. To be more specific the problem apparently is that these shows mention the White house talking points at all. Somehow by acknowledging the existence of these talking points and, God forbid, agreeing with some of them Fox News is guilty of being biased. The definition of biased here seems to be "agreeing or disagreeing with any point not previously 'agreed upon' by the liberal media." If this is the definition then yah, Fox is biased.
It got more interesting when another pundit began to explain that it was unconstitutional for Fox to parrot these talking points. Let me first ask that, if this is true, then do we get to ban MSNBC, CNN, New York Times and Air America if and when Obama wins? No? Then your problem isn't that Fox is repeating, or more accurately reporting, white house talking points but that those points are not your talking points. Hypocrisy like this is rampant throughout the media. To address the constitutionality of this we must consider the argument itself. I cannot find a link to this so I am going to have to do this from memory. (Let me ask my very small audience at this time to please send any sources you have. I would like any of them.)
From Bennett in the morning sometime at 4 AM (I know, quite an ungodly hour, so forgive me if I screw this up.) a female pundit stated that it is unconstitutional for Fox to, and I quote, "Be a mouthpiece for the government" Even ignoring the obvious problem involving their complacency toward being a mouth piece for the Clintons during their stay, this argument does not fly. The only thing in the constitution that could possibly be misconstrued as making it unconstitutional to "be the mouthpiece of the government" is the freedom of speech and press part of amendment I. This fails to address anything regarding this as the government is not directly or even indirectly prohibiting them from speaking. However, it would be unconstitutional for liberals to prohibit Fox from speaking by forbidding them to tell their side of the story.
If you are at all surprised by this then you are not aware of the Fairness Doctrine. It is an attempt to bring back rules and regulations that more or less shutdown talk radio which is completely dominated by conservatives. All this is done in the name of being equitable to both sides. Unfortunately not everyone wants to have another viewpoint shoved down their throats. Although I do think people should look at both sides, I do not believe in mandating it. If you want to see me switch sides on an issue, add the word mandate. Most everything could be accomplished without mandates.
If you still are not convinced that we shouldn't allow this then all you need to do is ask yourself what if when the republicans got back into office they decide to use these rules against you. Censorship is censorship, it doesn't matter who does the censoring.
It got more interesting when another pundit began to explain that it was unconstitutional for Fox to parrot these talking points. Let me first ask that, if this is true, then do we get to ban MSNBC, CNN, New York Times and Air America if and when Obama wins? No? Then your problem isn't that Fox is repeating, or more accurately reporting, white house talking points but that those points are not your talking points. Hypocrisy like this is rampant throughout the media. To address the constitutionality of this we must consider the argument itself. I cannot find a link to this so I am going to have to do this from memory. (Let me ask my very small audience at this time to please send any sources you have. I would like any of them.)
From Bennett in the morning sometime at 4 AM (I know, quite an ungodly hour, so forgive me if I screw this up.) a female pundit stated that it is unconstitutional for Fox to, and I quote, "Be a mouthpiece for the government" Even ignoring the obvious problem involving their complacency toward being a mouth piece for the Clintons during their stay, this argument does not fly. The only thing in the constitution that could possibly be misconstrued as making it unconstitutional to "be the mouthpiece of the government" is the freedom of speech and press part of amendment I. This fails to address anything regarding this as the government is not directly or even indirectly prohibiting them from speaking. However, it would be unconstitutional for liberals to prohibit Fox from speaking by forbidding them to tell their side of the story.
If you are at all surprised by this then you are not aware of the Fairness Doctrine. It is an attempt to bring back rules and regulations that more or less shutdown talk radio which is completely dominated by conservatives. All this is done in the name of being equitable to both sides. Unfortunately not everyone wants to have another viewpoint shoved down their throats. Although I do think people should look at both sides, I do not believe in mandating it. If you want to see me switch sides on an issue, add the word mandate. Most everything could be accomplished without mandates.
If you still are not convinced that we shouldn't allow this then all you need to do is ask yourself what if when the republicans got back into office they decide to use these rules against you. Censorship is censorship, it doesn't matter who does the censoring.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Iraq, A war gone right.
Imagine if after WWII we had only lost three thousand soldiers (not including the attack on Pearl Harbor) or if it used only one fifth of our national budget instead of the 3/4 it did use. Iraq, a war whose statistics are exactly these has been waged for over five years now. Let me first correct myself and a common misconception. This isn't a war as in the Iraq war, but a front in the War on Terror. This includes our front in Afganistan. Regardless of this trivial point many people have become disillusioned about this particular battle. Many beleive that this distracts from our true goal of finding and hopefully executeing Osama Bin Laden. This is the first thing that is wrong. We are not there to kill Osama, we are there to stop terrorism wherever it exists. This means fighting the terror orginaizations and the countries who harbor them. Sorry to disappoint the war for oil crowd but well... your wrong, and I am certain that some if not most of you know on some level that you are wrong, either in logic or in actuality.
In the beguinning George Bush Jr., with intel from MI6 (the british version of our CIA) stated that Iraq was looking for nuclear weapon materials. Where are these WMDs? Well first he said "looking" and also stated that they "might" already have them. Well how do we know this isn't a lie? Well as the times online reports the Butler committee agreed with this assesment based on data known at the time (source http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article457472.ece). Not only were they looking for WMDs but already possesed some in the form of Nerve gas. (Source http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000915.html) Along with this they also possessed: 500 tons of yellow cake uranium (left over since after Desert Storm, why it wasn't confiscated by the UN inspectors is beyond me and just another reason we shouldn't even trust them to sell girl scout cookies.) and approxamately 500 chemical weapons including Sarin and Mustard gas (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html note: weapons were partially degraded due to their storage). Ya right, we lied, I admit it.
The yellow cake is under dispute as it "could not be used in a nuclear weapon" And sulfur makes a very bad propellent by itself but with salt peter it goes boom. "They did not have the ability to refine it themselves". Strange assertion since I could refine it myself. It is very easy actully. The only problem is that someone as unskilled as me would have a very large loss ratio. This isn't to say that it is exceedingly difficult to build a centerfuge though. "They didn't have enough to make a bomb." It takes 8 kilograms of uranium 235 to make a gun or implosion type of atomic bomb. 500 metric tons is literally thousands of times that. If their refining was poor and produced only one gram of U 235 for every kilogram of yellow cake then they would have enough for atleast one bomb. Assuming, as is could be true, that U 238 made up most of the material a breeder reactor could still be constructed to change it from U 238 to Plutonium. Safe, right.
Bush didn't lie and wasn't even wrong about Iraq but that dosn't mean we shouldn't have been there. Accepting this poor line of reasoning we could of course point to the depravity of his regieme but we went in there under the War on Terror. Although some may disagree with that statement I made it and will now have to defend it. What if I told you Saddam himself was rather friendly to terror orginizations?
"Many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States," This is from a report regarding the link between the dictator and and multiple terror groups including Al-qaeda (he was not involved in 9/11 however). (source http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/21/saddam-friendly-to-terror-groups/) Multiple contacts andconections? Sounds bad if you ask me.
So there were 'other' reasons for the war? Oil had to be the real reason though. No, it wasn't. I doubt it was more then an after thought. Remember, conservatives and moderates want local oil, not foreign. The Democrats may be open to this but in general the american people are not. How could I know? Well, it wouldn't even be a logical place to go for oil. Think about the fuel spent to get there. If we did infact go to war for oil then a more logical step would be to invade Mexico or even better Venezuela. Both have oil reserves and both would be vastly cheaper to wage a war against.
The war is costing too much. This is intresting to hear since the dems are not known for fiscal responsibility but lets play along. Often when refering to this arguement people talk about our nine trillion dollar national debt and how the Iraq war is the cause. Then in a quizzical yet intresting display of self defeat they also spout off that the war has cost 500 billion dollars right now. 9 trillion minus 500 billion is 8.5 trillion dollars so if the Iraq war never existed then we would be 8.5 trillion dollars in debt still. Ahh, what would they bitch about then? How bout the social programs that cost our government hundreds of billions of dollars a year? It is like a little cute Iraq war in every one of them. Only alot of the money invested in Iraq goes to American contractors to buy American steel and American made parts. Those social programs go to paying people not to work. Ya, this one doesn't float either. Glad to see them talk the talk though; it is half the job after all.
No fiscal responsibility is the reason. "But we are loseing the war!!!!" We are doing so well that their own prime minister now thinks it is time for a time table. I must say he is doing a good job as since Al-Maliki has taken office we have fullfilled 15 out of 17 benchmarks we have set upon placing there. Iraq will be stable given just a few more years (I would wager no more than 5). Unfortunately credit for victory may be given to the protesters this time. If the dems win then it is no doubt they will pull out. Id I was asked three months ago I would tell you it would be a massacre, today I would say it wouls be a gamble. If Iraq manages to stand on its own then it will be to Iraq and Al-Maliki's own credit and not the democratic party, not Nancy Pelosi and definately not Harry Reid.
Iraq was not for oil, Bush didn't lie, WMDs were found and the war is not being lost. But hey, don't listen to me. I am just one of the brainwashed sheeple. I will just sit back and wait for this to end for the better or for the worse.
In the beguinning George Bush Jr., with intel from MI6 (the british version of our CIA) stated that Iraq was looking for nuclear weapon materials. Where are these WMDs? Well first he said "looking" and also stated that they "might" already have them. Well how do we know this isn't a lie? Well as the times online reports the Butler committee agreed with this assesment based on data known at the time (source http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article457472.ece). Not only were they looking for WMDs but already possesed some in the form of Nerve gas. (Source http://www.defensetech.org/archives/000915.html) Along with this they also possessed: 500 tons of yellow cake uranium (left over since after Desert Storm, why it wasn't confiscated by the UN inspectors is beyond me and just another reason we shouldn't even trust them to sell girl scout cookies.) and approxamately 500 chemical weapons including Sarin and Mustard gas (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html note: weapons were partially degraded due to their storage). Ya right, we lied, I admit it.
The yellow cake is under dispute as it "could not be used in a nuclear weapon" And sulfur makes a very bad propellent by itself but with salt peter it goes boom. "They did not have the ability to refine it themselves". Strange assertion since I could refine it myself. It is very easy actully. The only problem is that someone as unskilled as me would have a very large loss ratio. This isn't to say that it is exceedingly difficult to build a centerfuge though. "They didn't have enough to make a bomb." It takes 8 kilograms of uranium 235 to make a gun or implosion type of atomic bomb. 500 metric tons is literally thousands of times that. If their refining was poor and produced only one gram of U 235 for every kilogram of yellow cake then they would have enough for atleast one bomb. Assuming, as is could be true, that U 238 made up most of the material a breeder reactor could still be constructed to change it from U 238 to Plutonium. Safe, right.
Bush didn't lie and wasn't even wrong about Iraq but that dosn't mean we shouldn't have been there. Accepting this poor line of reasoning we could of course point to the depravity of his regieme but we went in there under the War on Terror. Although some may disagree with that statement I made it and will now have to defend it. What if I told you Saddam himself was rather friendly to terror orginizations?
"Many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States," This is from a report regarding the link between the dictator and and multiple terror groups including Al-qaeda (he was not involved in 9/11 however). (source http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/mar/21/saddam-friendly-to-terror-groups/) Multiple contacts andconections? Sounds bad if you ask me.
So there were 'other' reasons for the war? Oil had to be the real reason though. No, it wasn't. I doubt it was more then an after thought. Remember, conservatives and moderates want local oil, not foreign. The Democrats may be open to this but in general the american people are not. How could I know? Well, it wouldn't even be a logical place to go for oil. Think about the fuel spent to get there. If we did infact go to war for oil then a more logical step would be to invade Mexico or even better Venezuela. Both have oil reserves and both would be vastly cheaper to wage a war against.
The war is costing too much. This is intresting to hear since the dems are not known for fiscal responsibility but lets play along. Often when refering to this arguement people talk about our nine trillion dollar national debt and how the Iraq war is the cause. Then in a quizzical yet intresting display of self defeat they also spout off that the war has cost 500 billion dollars right now. 9 trillion minus 500 billion is 8.5 trillion dollars so if the Iraq war never existed then we would be 8.5 trillion dollars in debt still. Ahh, what would they bitch about then? How bout the social programs that cost our government hundreds of billions of dollars a year? It is like a little cute Iraq war in every one of them. Only alot of the money invested in Iraq goes to American contractors to buy American steel and American made parts. Those social programs go to paying people not to work. Ya, this one doesn't float either. Glad to see them talk the talk though; it is half the job after all.
No fiscal responsibility is the reason. "But we are loseing the war!!!!" We are doing so well that their own prime minister now thinks it is time for a time table. I must say he is doing a good job as since Al-Maliki has taken office we have fullfilled 15 out of 17 benchmarks we have set upon placing there. Iraq will be stable given just a few more years (I would wager no more than 5). Unfortunately credit for victory may be given to the protesters this time. If the dems win then it is no doubt they will pull out. Id I was asked three months ago I would tell you it would be a massacre, today I would say it wouls be a gamble. If Iraq manages to stand on its own then it will be to Iraq and Al-Maliki's own credit and not the democratic party, not Nancy Pelosi and definately not Harry Reid.
Iraq was not for oil, Bush didn't lie, WMDs were found and the war is not being lost. But hey, don't listen to me. I am just one of the brainwashed sheeple. I will just sit back and wait for this to end for the better or for the worse.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Independance Day '08
As the day of our independance draws near many people begin to think about the fireworks, the hot dogs and burgers, the festivals and parties. So as the Fourth of July approches stop and think about how we got here.
In the year 1770 no government on the face of the earth existed that was like the US. Just a few short years before we declared independance from Britan. Think about that. That means that our founders had very little to go on when it came to founding our government. If you were to found your own government what would you make it? If you think long enough you would undoubtedly come up with not just a government but even an economy and a culture. You may even go so far, as I have done when I was little, as to try to enforce laws to make the people of your country follow your own version of utopia. It is a beutiful idea huh? See, we all have this idea of a perfect society that if everyone just adhered to the the world would be perfect. If you stop to think though, what if your idea of utopia is someone elses idea of hell? Some may say I don't care; I know better. Now what if you were in someone elses idea of utopia? Talk to enough people and you will note that everyone elses idea of utopia is at least a little different. Suddenly you may be transported to paradise or a newer, more gruesome version of Nazi germany.
This is how profound our forefathers were. They knew that one man's tresure is another man's curse. So just think on this. What would you do knowing this? Well I can't know but I do know what Thomas Jefferson said "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." The simple fact is that, assuming you are a benevolent leader, you will never have want to control your people. Imagine your people angry at you because you did one thing or another. To be more exact to his meaning, only a tyrant can come of a dictator. One other quote from him that strikes me is "The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." This quote shows what the Declaration is all about. Our founders knew that there was no way to make a just government that listened only to the one and so instead they focused their efforts on making our government a government that listend to the many. This perfect government would only protect your freedoms and that this goal is the best and single most important thing in the world.
I would also like to talk about patriotism. dictionary.com defines patriotism as devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty. Certainly this is an honorable goal for all. Patriotism is sometimes used as some kind of political hockey puck with people questioning each others patriotism all the time. I am not saying that patriotism isn't important and I definately think this is a laudable trait, but sometimes it seems like a futile political game. If someone isn't a patriot then it is always obvious to those who are. It is as if patriotism is a tie-dye shirt. Everyone without one stares at the few who do. One major trait of patriotism is the self sacrifice for your own country, so by this standard all veterans are patriots, but sacrifice need not be just your life but your time or your money and maybe even your family. As John Adams, a hero of mine, said "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." In this sense, patriotism is the most important national resourse in the world.
So enjoy your barbeques and your fireworks shows. Just remember that those who came before us, those who graced us with their wisdom, are precicely why we are here. If not for them and every life given in the liberation and defense of our great country we may still be british and the world may never have known freedom.
In the year 1770 no government on the face of the earth existed that was like the US. Just a few short years before we declared independance from Britan. Think about that. That means that our founders had very little to go on when it came to founding our government. If you were to found your own government what would you make it? If you think long enough you would undoubtedly come up with not just a government but even an economy and a culture. You may even go so far, as I have done when I was little, as to try to enforce laws to make the people of your country follow your own version of utopia. It is a beutiful idea huh? See, we all have this idea of a perfect society that if everyone just adhered to the the world would be perfect. If you stop to think though, what if your idea of utopia is someone elses idea of hell? Some may say I don't care; I know better. Now what if you were in someone elses idea of utopia? Talk to enough people and you will note that everyone elses idea of utopia is at least a little different. Suddenly you may be transported to paradise or a newer, more gruesome version of Nazi germany.
This is how profound our forefathers were. They knew that one man's tresure is another man's curse. So just think on this. What would you do knowing this? Well I can't know but I do know what Thomas Jefferson said "An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens." The simple fact is that, assuming you are a benevolent leader, you will never have want to control your people. Imagine your people angry at you because you did one thing or another. To be more exact to his meaning, only a tyrant can come of a dictator. One other quote from him that strikes me is "The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." This quote shows what the Declaration is all about. Our founders knew that there was no way to make a just government that listened only to the one and so instead they focused their efforts on making our government a government that listend to the many. This perfect government would only protect your freedoms and that this goal is the best and single most important thing in the world.
I would also like to talk about patriotism. dictionary.com defines patriotism as devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty. Certainly this is an honorable goal for all. Patriotism is sometimes used as some kind of political hockey puck with people questioning each others patriotism all the time. I am not saying that patriotism isn't important and I definately think this is a laudable trait, but sometimes it seems like a futile political game. If someone isn't a patriot then it is always obvious to those who are. It is as if patriotism is a tie-dye shirt. Everyone without one stares at the few who do. One major trait of patriotism is the self sacrifice for your own country, so by this standard all veterans are patriots, but sacrifice need not be just your life but your time or your money and maybe even your family. As John Adams, a hero of mine, said "Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." In this sense, patriotism is the most important national resourse in the world.
So enjoy your barbeques and your fireworks shows. Just remember that those who came before us, those who graced us with their wisdom, are precicely why we are here. If not for them and every life given in the liberation and defense of our great country we may still be british and the world may never have known freedom.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Victory is ours!!! sort of...
The supreme court rule against the D.C. gun ban this week. That's the good news. The bad news is that it was only by a 5 to 4 vote. Thanks to that swing vote of Kennedy's we have won this battle. I find it somewhat terrifying that four of the Supreme court justices have not read the Constitution of the United States. You know, the one they are supposed to interpret. This will undoubtedly change however with the new presidency. If Obama is elected and the congress stays heavily liberal then they together will appoint more radical judges. Great!!! More Ginsburgs. This is rather irritating to a NRA member like myself.
Some comments about this come from various places. Despite how much he infuriates me at least I agree with McCain here Today's ruling makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans (courtesy of NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91934910&ft=1&f=1001) Obama also gave a sort of praise Today's ruling, the first clear statement on this issue in 127 years, will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country," he said, adding that "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne," but the decision reinforced that "if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe. (also NPR)
I think this is interesting as he stated that "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." No Obama, it is what isn't constitutional in D.C. isn't constitutional anywhere in the U.S. period.
What was the dissenting opinions? Well Stevens tried to make the point that the Founders would have made the individual right aspect of the Second Amendment express if that was what was intended; that the "militia" preamble and exact phrase "to keep and bear arms" demands the conclusion that the Second Amendment touches on state militia service only. (wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_v._D.C.) Would you have me assume that if I had read to sentences that read "In order to protect Jill's right to eats Ice cream, Jake's right to have brass knuckles must not be infringed." to mean that Jill should get the brass knuckles or that Jake can only possess them if Jill's right to eat ice cream is in danger? The preamble just gives a reason why the law exists (aside from protecting from a tyrannical gov't). Many laws have that kind of crap right at the top. Read the beginning of the constitution or the declaration. Read the beginning of the (thankfully) failed law called the climate security act of 2007.
Of course Breyer brought up how many people die because of guns. I am glad to say fear mongering hasn't gone out of style. Gun bans don't work. This has been proven numerous times. Do you think it is a coincidence that D.C. was the murder capital of the U.S.? Never mind, this point has been driven hard enough already and the only ones who believe this drivel anymore are the zealots.
Thankfully there are somethings we can do. If we can bring back the GOP as the conservative party and take back the congress from the radical left wing MoveOn mesmerized dems then we can impeach every on of those justices. That's right, Impeach. They can be impeached too. (read Article II last section if you don't believe me.) If we don't band together soon then we may not live in a free world for long.
Some comments about this come from various places. Despite how much he infuriates me at least I agree with McCain here Today's ruling makes clear that other municipalities like Chicago that have banned handguns have infringed on the constitutional rights of Americans (courtesy of NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91934910&ft=1&f=1001) Obama also gave a sort of praise Today's ruling, the first clear statement on this issue in 127 years, will provide much-needed guidance to local jurisdictions across the country," he said, adding that "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne," but the decision reinforced that "if we act responsibly, we can both protect the constitutional right to bear arms and keep our communities and our children safe. (also NPR)
I think this is interesting as he stated that "what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne." No Obama, it is what isn't constitutional in D.C. isn't constitutional anywhere in the U.S. period.
What was the dissenting opinions? Well Stevens tried to make the point that the Founders would have made the individual right aspect of the Second Amendment express if that was what was intended; that the "militia" preamble and exact phrase "to keep and bear arms" demands the conclusion that the Second Amendment touches on state militia service only. (wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_v._D.C.) Would you have me assume that if I had read to sentences that read "In order to protect Jill's right to eats Ice cream, Jake's right to have brass knuckles must not be infringed." to mean that Jill should get the brass knuckles or that Jake can only possess them if Jill's right to eat ice cream is in danger? The preamble just gives a reason why the law exists (aside from protecting from a tyrannical gov't). Many laws have that kind of crap right at the top. Read the beginning of the constitution or the declaration. Read the beginning of the (thankfully) failed law called the climate security act of 2007.
Of course Breyer brought up how many people die because of guns. I am glad to say fear mongering hasn't gone out of style. Gun bans don't work. This has been proven numerous times. Do you think it is a coincidence that D.C. was the murder capital of the U.S.? Never mind, this point has been driven hard enough already and the only ones who believe this drivel anymore are the zealots.
Thankfully there are somethings we can do. If we can bring back the GOP as the conservative party and take back the congress from the radical left wing MoveOn mesmerized dems then we can impeach every on of those justices. That's right, Impeach. They can be impeached too. (read Article II last section if you don't believe me.) If we don't band together soon then we may not live in a free world for long.
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