The three gates to Occupy Wall Street: Lust , Anger and Greed

Picture this scene. You're standing across the street from a bank. You hear some commotion, and suddenly as a Police car screech's up in front and the officers jump out with guns drawn, several robbers come running out the doors - the two groups see each other, and begin shouting and waving their guns at each other.
Got that image?

Ok, now, if you were asked to describe what you were seeing, if you were asked to describe those two groups, would your first comment be anything remotely similar to this?

"Well, there are a number of very striking similarities between these two groups, both of them are very much involved with hurriedly running around in groups and yelling and waving their arms around in regards to financial matters, and that both are understandably concerned with correcting perceived wrongs."

What would you think of a reporter, if that was how they described these two groups activities outside of the bank? If you challenged them by saying,

"Wait... wait...wait... one of these groups is trying to take what belongs in the bank, and the other one is trying to the prevent the theft of another's property! One of these groups is deliberately using violence to get their way - there are HUGE differences between these two groups! How can you possibly compare them?!"

, and their response to you was that you should get past your ideological differences that you have with one of the groups, and pay more attention to their obvious similarities, and then continued to cite the fact that both groups made noise and waved their arms around about financial matters as being the most relevant characteristics with which to describe cops and robbers to everyone else listening.

What would you think of those reporters and politicians then?

Is that any different from how the press - and President Obama, - are currently relating the nature of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and Tea Party protesters?:

"On Tuesday, Obama said he understood "the frustrations being expressed in those protests," on Wall Street, noting that "in some ways, they're not that different from some of the protests that we saw coming from the Tea Party.""

Now I know the media is having a problem with analogies lately, so let me clarify, I am not comparing the two groups here, OWS and Tea Party, to bank robbers and policemen (that would be too rude a thing to do to bank robbers), but I am comparing that hypothetical person's reporting of the scene, with how the Press and media people are actually discussing, reporting and comparing the OWS & Tea Party movements.

Remember, the Freedom of the Press was specifically protected under our Constitution - because it was originally understood that the Press would not only concern itself with reporting to We The People on the objectives and relevant facts which are important to our lives and the state of the nation, but that they would also have a responsibility to question the statements of politicians and anyone else aspiring to political power, and yet it has, for the most part, analyzed these two groups... one, the

• Tea Party, which has been nothing but peaceful over the course of a few years time

, and the other,

• OWS, which has been violent and law breaking since their very first week

, and declared them to be similar, based upon something so insignificant and non-essential, as the fact that they are both protesting the state of the economy and their dissatisfaction with Politicians and (some) corporate behavior.

Aren't there a few other questions and issues that should be getting raised here?

Such as... oh I don't know, something like WHAT ARE THEY PROTESTING FOR?!?!?!?! Aren't the purposes and aims of the two groups of more relevance than the incidental fact that both came together in large numbers to wave signs and protest? There are at least a few contrasts that should be compared, aren't there? Such as the fact that, while the Tea Party was roused, in part, by the economy, and the greed of some of those involved, that it is not whythey've been protesting,

The Tea Party has been protesting for the need to restore the position of the Constitution to the American form of government - to reestablish the Rule of Law instead of the whims of impassioned men	OWS is about tearing the entire government and system down, in order to satisfy the desires of impassioned men.
The Tea Party is marked by orderly protests	OWS is disorder incarnate.
The Tea Party is about restoring the law	OWS is founded on and through, violating the law by taking over occupying, and refusing to leave, public and private areas.
The Tea Party is protesting for Govt to return to its proper place and allow people the liberty to live their own lives	OWS is entirely oriented around demanding favoritism and govt intrusion into peoples lives.

And the press - and President Obama - say there are many striking similarities because they are both protesting? How is that possible?

If you think this is just my bias, that I'm over-reacting, if you see OWS as simply a case of youth expressing high minded ideals, perhaps you should consider the comments made from a vantage point of an ocean away.

The UK's Daily Mail has been following the occupation closely, and says:

That the U.S. 'Occupy Wall Street' demonstrations are a protest movement is a false narrative played out by the press. To equate them to the Tea Party is a moral relativism that stands logic on its head. This is a mob and the goal is mob rule.

And yet our press and President, say they are similar. How can they possibly describe the flea-baggers (yuk-yuk!) as high-minded idealists?

Or maybe a better question might be why would they describe them in this way, and make the unwarranted comparisons that they do?

The Epitome of Greed
Here's a clue towards the answer; I nearly let out a whoop when Big Journalism’s Dana Loesch was commenting on the Republican debates on CNN last Tuesday night; after she noted that,

"Any movement that argues for a living wage regardless of whether you work or not is the epitome of greed."

I did a quick fist pump as I watched that the next morning (TIVO, gotta love it), accomplishing what my coffee was having a hard time with up to that point - waking me up. She was exactly right of course, the fevered desire for what you have not earned, the desire to possess, enjoy and revel in what you may or may not have any rightful claim to, simply because you want it, and wanting ever more of it is Greed. But that isn't what really woke me up, you see, the really interesting part was what came after Dana's comment.

I was looking forward to how the leftists on the panel would respond, or react, to that, because it's so blatantly true, I wondered would they try to minimize it? or deny it? or try to dismiss it?

Nope. They completely surprised me.

The camera immediately cut to Democrat operative Donna Brazille... who proceeded to have absolutely nothing to say about Dana's statement at all, not even in denial of it; instead, she spoke as if Dana had said nothing at all - it was of no concern to her - whatsoever.

That planted a question in my head that plagued me for the rest of the day.

What about greed?... or any other vice for that matter, what about that? Why is it that vice - which is practically on a storefront, plate glass window-shopping level of display in every photo or video of OWS - why is it of absolutely zero concern to nearly everyone? Media and protesters alike? And please, don't try telling me that Greed is of concern to them, that that is what Occupy Wall Street is all about, that 'greed is the whole purpose of what they are protesting about' - B. Friggin' S.!

It's a pretext, an excuse, nothing more.

Well, that's not quite right, it is something more than that - but only because they still think that it means something to you - that much they still grasp (and fear). And because it does still means something to most of you, it serves as a stone for them to hurl within your mind at their enemies.

But what does it mean to them? It is meaningless.
Maybe a definition is in order here:

Definition of 'Greed'
1. (n.) greed - excessive or rapacious desire, esp. for wealth or possessions; avarice; covetousness.

Etymology: (1600–10; back formation from greedy)

If Greed was actually a concern for any of these people, if they understood or cared about what it actually meant, and the harm it could inflict upon people, they would be watchful for any signs of it, and above all, in their own words, but in their own words, they have things like this to say,

• Demand one... Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.
• Demand three: Guaranteed living wage income regardless of employment.
• Demand four: Free college education.

, and so on. Now, if they were truly concerned about greed, they'd be on the lookout for it everywhere and I would think that they would, at the very least, call those demands before their public councils and give it at least a few 'Down Twnkles', wouldn't you? But the thought of Greed being in their midst, or of any of it's six deadly brothers and sisters tagging along with it, troubles their minds not at all.

Why not?

Back in the old days, as defined by the New York Times as being a time when people still cared about Right and Wrong and used Reason as a method for discovering what was True in order to improve your life, rather than simply as an effective weapon for defeating opponents in arguments, as the NYTimesian modernists claim; once upon a time it was common knowledge that there were a set of virtues and vices which sensible people attempted to either emulate or avoid, and it was common knowledge because it was taught in schools, taught in stories, taught in the media and even, for a time, even taught in the movies , and the appearance of unvirtuous behavior was vigorously shunned.

In case that fabled once upon a time was too long ago (or too far away in fly over country) for you to recall, the moral Virtues 'were':

courage, temperance, self-discipline, moderation, modesty, humility, generosity, friendliness, truthfulness, honesty and justice.

The moral vices included:

cowardice, self-indulgence, recklessness, wastefulness, greed, vanity, untruthfulness, dishonesty and injustice.

And those behaviors were cultivated, or denounced, because it was thought that habituating yourself to abiding by them made your life better for having done so.

Sanctimony aside, and without going into whether or not such an idyllic time ever really did, does or could, exist in this country, humor me a moment, put on your thinking cap and tell me which of these two sets of pictures do you see as being more strongly representative of the virtues, and which of the vices?


Why do you suppose that is?

On One Hand Or The Other - Reaching for the Apple or the Worm?
Those Cardinal Virtues, Temperance, Courage Justice and Prudence, and the Christian ones that followed, Hope, Faith and Charity, were considered to be the behaviors, which, if developed into habits - or ignored - would define your fate, "Character is Destiny!" sending you towards either the Light or towards the Dark Side.

There was a time (and IS a time, depending upon where you mark it) when manners were observed, peoples rights were respected, and 'Please and Thank you' were fighting words if not spoken, because the virtues, and the manners which follow from them, were taught, learned, respected, and expected, and in the world today, the people most likely to remember and reflect those ideals, will be found in conservative circles, which is what the Tea Party draws most of its people from, and so not surprisingly, for those who don't mind engaging in some thought, pictures from Tea Parties are going to tend to reflect those values.

On the other hand, there's a story going around today, that conservatives flinch more at writhing maggots, than leftists do.

Why would that be? Why do you think it might be? I haven't bothered to look too far into it, but if their press release is representative of their findings, they are laughably, and predictably, worthless:

"“The proper interpretation of the findings (in the current study) is not that biology causes politics or that politics causes biology,” the authors write, “but that certain political orientations at some unspecified point become housed in our biology, with meaningful political consequences.”

Acceptance of the role of involuntary physiological responses is not easy for many, however: “Most are proud of their political orientations, believe them to be rational responses to the world around them, and are reluctant to concede that subconscious predispositions play any role in shaping them,” they write."

Taking this at face value, that seems to me to be the confident proclamation of a smart idiot - someone with the bio-mechanical capability of being intelligent, but whose cultural and philosophical ignorance has rendered their judgments primitive baubles of ignorance.

This response which they are attempting to spin as biological in origin, Aristotle observed 2,500 years ago as being the type of unconscious, or 'habituated response' to be expected from a person who has habituated themselves towards virtuous practices,

"...men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference."

, and it is the entirely predictable (except to a modernist who sees only division between mind and body rather than unity), and normal response, to be expected from them.

"...We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education...."

The absence of that outward response, the flinch, is the reflections of the absence of those virtues within, the absence of 'Right Education'.
Because Virtues presume an outlook, they are integrated, they extend through habits of virtue and courtesy, deep into your respect for what is Good and what is True, and into your appreciation of what is Beautiful. And when neglected, such as with bad manners, or on being lied to, or on being presented with an aesthetic assault (ugliness), you mentally and even physically, flinch.

Practicing those virtues consistently is not easy, and it is certainly not something that can be done unthinkingly, it takes the effort of focused thought followed by the physical effort of transforming your thoughts into actions, it requires a mindful adherence to Truth over emotion, Judgment over passion, logic over demagoguery, in order to come to those conclusions which were considered, in our Founding Fathers era, to be the very height of Liberal Thinking - those being the Free Market, living virtuous lives and seeking equal Justice for all - and not to be practiced in order to receive a reward but because it is right to behave that way; though of course there is a real reward for living in that way, as they well knew, you find that you are living a life worth living, one lived in pursuit of happiness.

But on the other (anti-Western civilization) hand... not practicing them leads you to sssuch a state of mental unfitness, that you could easily find yourself spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on expensive and detailed scientific studies, and yet come to entirely worthless conclusions, as with the intellectual flinch above. And that IS what it was, for just as conservatives flinch at ugliness, the leftist materialist flinches at the possibility of the Good, the Beautiful and the True... and that which habituates you towards respecting the same - Virtue.

Without it, you are lost in a rudderless, relativistic, nausea, as Sartes put it, and as OWS is demonstrating it in cities across our land, and around the world. The squallor of their encampments, is a demonstration of the leftist lack of possessing a flinch. It is ugly, but they don't seem to know it... why do you suppose that is? And that being the case, it's also not too surprising that what follows them is filth, open defecation, and rats and riots.

I suppose that if the old saw about cleanliness being next to Godliness is in any way true... it probably tells us more about what OWS truly is, than anything else I could say.

Let me try putting it this way, letting a few pictures tell a few thousand words: The person accustomed to expect

the imagery of the left,	... have very different reactions to this sort of imagery, whether it be visual such as this,	or the imagery of the right,
Whatever....		OMG!(Flinch)

Get the picture?

And the same goes with it's equivalent in manners, dress, music, politics, etc, etc, etc. and it usually comes with heaping helpings of stimulation, adrenaline rush, endorphins, etc, right? But seriously, which of the above do you associate with the politics of the left, and which with the politics of the right?

You know the answer.

Right?

The lure of the flinchless path, is that it appears to be easy, self satisfying, usually makes an outward show to startle, simply 'striking a pose' is enough to seem rebellious... even if you've no idea what you are rebelling against... at least it requires no effortful thought in order to come to the sorts of conclusions which follow from emotional reactions, rather than through substantiated and careful, principled reflection; the tugs of the bleeding heart and the 'fairness' of an issue require of the 'thinker' only that they follow the easiest and self satisfying path of reactions, without concern for probable or actual results.

Likewise, to let run your anger and outrage lead your actions in pursuit of those ends, is the simplest course of all - positions, rather than principles, action rather than reflection.

We can't wait! is one that fits in well with it's siren song.

Isn't their reaction against 'corporate greed!' a sort of a flinch? No, I don't think so, it is less a recoiling from disorder, ugliness and falsehood, and more a pricked desire, a self indulgent craving to have and to take, and a response at not being able to follow through with what they want to do - which is to take what they want. Aristotle again,

"Self-indulgence is more like a voluntary state than cowardice. For the former is actuated by pleasure, the latter by pain, of which the one is to be chosen and the other to be avoided; and pain upsets and destroys the nature of the person who feels it, while pleasure does nothing of the sort. Therefore self-indulgence is more voluntary. Hence also it is more a matter of reproach; for it is easier to become accustomed to its objects, since there are many things of this sort in life, and the process of habituation to them is free from danger, while with terrible objects the reverse is the case. But cowardice would seem to be voluntary in a different degree from its particular manifestations; for it is itself painless, but in these we are upset by pain, so that we even throw down our arms and disgrace ourselves in other ways; hence our acts are even thought to be done under compulsion. For the self-indulgent man, on the other hand, the particular acts are voluntary (for he does them with craving and desire), but the whole state is less so; for no one craves to be self-indulgent."

The Path to the Dark Side, was, is, Yoda might say, easy, more enticing. In the Founders era, not having the benefit of Yoda, they were taken with the Choice of Hercules, where he had to choose between the lure of sultry pleasure, and the sober modesty of fair Virtue. But here I'll stray form the Western path, which usually calls heavily on Western classics, with Aristotle, Aquinas and the like, just to show that they were not alone in their understanding of the importance of Virtue, and there is a line from the Bhagahvad Gita which nails the issue quite well:

"Hercules is depicted with two women flanking him, who represent the opposite destinies which the life could reserve him: on the left the Virtue is calling him to the hardest path leading to glory through hardship, while the second, the Pleasure, the easier path, is enticing him to the vice."

"Hell has three gates: lust, anger, and greed"

Scroll back up to those pictures above, doesn't that look about right? Look again, but this time while keeping in mind what a fellow named Kesava Kasmiri had to say about these three gates,

"Lord Krishna has now ended descriptions of the basic details of the nature and characteristics of the demoniac. Now He strongly advises by any means to avoid the triple threat of lust, greed and anger which is the underlying root cause of all demoniac vices and evils. As soon as lust, greed and anger are abandoned all other vices and evils dissolve and dissapate. Birth in hellish existences has three doors in the form of the door of lust, the door of greed and the door of anger. As soon as anyone enters into any one of these three doors they become void of discrimination and their mind becomes apprehended and controlled by the senses. This causes complete chaos and utter ruin to any human being, blocking access to their higher nature and totally obscuring the consciousness of the atma or immortal soul which leads to moksa or liberation from material existence. The three doorways of lust, greed and anger causes one to perform such sinful and abominable activities that damnation is the only result and leads a human being directly to hell to suffer immensely for their sinful inequities. Hence one should be extremely vigilant to avoid these three doors and keep them far away at a safe distance."

, any one of those three gates function as an entryway to hell itself.
Again, this does not require any particular religious affiliation, or any religious belief at all for that matter, in order to find the wisdom in it; it is every bit as significant when looked at from a secular, psychological, point of view, as from a religious one; hell is what awaits you here and now in your own heart and mind and in the life you create for yourself, once you allow yourself to pass through these doors and become committed to traveling down that road.

Is it really that surprising that there is little else on display with the Occupy Wall Street leaders and their messages, than what you would expect to find on passing through one or all of those three gates?

This is not a simple rhetorical point I'm making or attempting to score against 'the left', this is a consequential issue and worth looking little closer at and comparing further - shall we?

Who's that knocking on the door

How do these two groups approach these three doors, do they knock? Do they enter? Lets look behind - Door #1: Lust - seriously? Lust is not a keyword that is typically associated with the Tea Party, is it? Not that there aren't some gorgeous women in the Tea Party, but lust isn't what draws them there; defending their families is, which owes more to courage, than lust. What about the OWS crowd? You mean other than their parading around naked and having sex under tarps in public parks, exposing themselves to minors and multiple rapes? Really?? Door #2: Anger Hmmm, welll... I can see how someone could try to make an argument that anger is on display at Tea Party events, particularly during the early ones when facing clueless and condescending politico's telling us there was no need to read the bill before passing it. But IMHO, I'd say that had far more to do with being understandably indignant, than with ungovernable anger. Compare that to the OWS's Look at the OWS crowds, look at their dress, look at their signs, look at their manner, it SCREAMS anger and , violence , which isn't confined to the supposed political purpose of their gathering. And it is spreading now, not surprisingly, to fighting even amongst themselves, "Fights are erupting among Occupy Wall Street protesters, so much so that one corner of Zuccotti Park has emerged where protesters say they won't go for fear of their safety, the New York Daily News is reporting. Police officers also have been warned of "dangerous instruments" being concealed in cardboard tubing, the News says it has been told by unidentified police sources." Theirs is not an anger that follows from a perceived injustice, but from an unreasoning grudge against reality in general. The Tea Party people may be in some sense angry, but they are not at levels approaching frothing at the mouth, letting dogs loose on reporters or hurling plates, rocks and paint at the police - Tea Partiers are indignant in the face of real offences, and perceived evils, but they don't participate in them.

Issues Tea Party Occupy Wall Street Coherent statement of principles ................. Public Nudity Public Sex Rape ................. Anger Violence Riot ................. Filth Theft Child abuse Sedition Yep ................. Nope Hell Nope Nope ................. Some Nope Nope ................. Nope Nope Nope Nope Hell Nope ................. Yep Yep Yep and Yep ................. Yep Yep Yep ................. Yep Yep Yep Yep

Door #3: Greed. Spot me the greed in the Tea Party movement, I'll wait.

No, wanting to keep what is yours, what you've earned, is NOT greed, that comes from a sense of Justice - now we could argue about whether they've judged correctly or not, and IMHO they have, but you can't seriously argue that they are coming from a motivation of Greed.
The OWS however, is incessant in their demands for what is not theirs ("...regardless of employment..." and "...Free college education...") the demands for free wages, free education, forgiven loans, gimmee, gimmee, gimmee more! Gimme what I want without my having to earn it... is a greed that is even more naked than their lust.

And this isn't simply confined to the OWS, but to those favoring them, including our President who feeds it with sympathy and promises of using his executive power to enable students to 'cut out the middle-man' to misuse his power as president to refinance their loans, is, fittingly, shameless demagoguery without even the virtue of a fig leaf.

And there is also a greed for the moral standing which the Tea Party has - even in the face of three years of perpetual assault by the media - whenever they spoke of the Tea Party and its peaceful protests and demonstrations, it was either in mockery or while casting them as dangerous threats to the republic - Nancy Pelosi's quavering voiced "I've heard this rhetoric before", and yet they've maintained their respectable character. Don't laugh, the proof is in what the media and talking heads are attempting to do, and that is attempting to take that respectability, unearned, and associate it with their favorites in the OWS, which is what they are doing when they attempt to say the OWS is 'just like the Tea Party'.

This attempt to praise the OWS as being a movement driven by youthful virtue and noble ideals, is a farce, and their claims to be 'speaking truth to power' has passed through the gates of Lust, Anger and Greed and is now coming out as 'mouthing any available pretext for exerting violent power', which is why they ignore the reality in favor of their regurgitated virtual reality.

Virtual Virtues
The very visible fact is that there is far more lust, greed and anger to be seen in abundance, reflected in just one of the OWS demonstrations, than in all of the Tea Party's parties over the entire last three years.

Now, of course, there's little likelihood of a drive by sainting occurring within the Tea Party, and I wouldn't dream of painting any of us as being in any way better than who we are - people who are trying to live normal lives - but you cannot seriously say that you can see any resemblance between the Tea Party protesters and those of Occupy Wall Street! Neither is there any similarity in the motives or the ideals which lay behind them.

What Virtue which some of them may have held before, has passed through the three doors of their encampment, and come out the other side as vice, and any patina of virtue is only virtual.

In many ways, and often deliberately, our entire culture has been passed through these three doors, and in certain circles, there are entire industries, such as the entertainment, politics and educational industries, that have taken the long march through all three of them in a wild parade.
But while they have walked through, they cannot drag you with them without your consent, and if you, you, are still able to conceive of vice as a bad thing, then ask yourself, does it not seem likely to you that a group of people, gathered together under circumstances which are ungoverned by the normal rules of society, a group which is openly practicing some vices, and not just openly, but boastfully, does it seem likely to you that one or two vices are going to remain in compartmentalized isolation amongst the people sprawled about so closely under such minimal standards of behavior?

Are their practices likely to stop with only one or two? Really? I mean, vice is like the Lays Potato Chips of human behavior... you can't have only one. If you've had any experience with being human, you've got to know that it is far more likely that the vices you openly indulge in, not to mention the even more enticing and appealing ones, are going to be exercised in gleeful concert with their friends, you know, the other Seven Deadlies, right?

We've already passed through the gates of lust, anger and greed... do you really think that this behavior is going to stop there? What does it have to say for those people who didn't see this coming? Are those really the people you want as your leaders? As your educators? Seriously?
It used to be that vice was unquestionably considered to be something objectionable, especially if you were accused of engaging in one or more vices. Can you really watch what they are demonstrating in OWS, and preaching from the White house, and still say that the left believes vice to be a bad thing? Something that is worthy of being denounced in and of itself?

It used to be socially unacceptable to be accused of such behavior... there were morals clauses in contracts that were actually enforced. Today, with the public parade that has led us through violations of political morals clauses which were the spectacles of Nixon, Clinton, Gore, Weiner... the morals clauses linger on as little more than a joke, or as a convenient loophole to cancel a contract you no longer want to honor.

In today's society, in our popular culture, it has long been not only acceptable to indulge in the vices, but it has become popular to do so. And our popular culture has passed through the gates of lust, anger and greed and brought us to a state of transgendered classroom instruction... a state where public officials no longer feeling compelled to either present themselves as virtuous or to distance themselves from vice, or to worry about how some of their supporters so clearly associated with vice that it is not only no longer an issue, and their politicians such as Pelosi & Obama are attempting to 'reach out' to them. reflecting the ailing heart of the republic.

Getting to Here from There... one gate at a time... where will we be Tomorrow?
Where did this come from, how did they not learn better? Or maybe the better question, is how did they learn about anything else being better?

The fact that the popular media and pundits deliberately overlook Greed, as did Brazille, or any of the other vices so prevalent amongst the OWS, screams out that neither this, nor any other vice, is of enough concern for them to even bother with denying.

While it may very well serve as a stone for them to throw at their opponents, they sure as heck don't treat it as kryptonite, and that shows more about what they are about, than anything else. For OWS Greed is actually a value to them, as a tool or a weapon, they've no concern for the harm it may pose to either themselves or to society - it's but a means to advance their own ends.

Simple political partisanship is not enough to explain how these groups respective virtues and vices are obscured, excused or entirely dispensed with, in any consideration of OWS, and that brings us to a very revealing question.

Q: When comparing the Tea Party with OWS, why are their stated (and demonstrated) principles, purposes and practices, not the primary issues being discussed in comparisons between the two groups of protesters?
A: Because they are of no concern to either OWS, or those reporting on, or approving of, them.

It is because Principles & Practices, Virtues & Vices, are of no importance to them, that the pundits are able to say that they do see a resemblance between the Tea Party protesters and those of Occupy Wall Street.

This is a huge confession - and a significant revelation - for them, Policemen and Bank Robbers are similar because they do both yell and wave guns around in front of banks!

The key matter that does distinguish them - Virtue and Vice - is not in their world view. If Che' Guevara is thought of as a mass murder, then you could not possibly dream of wearing him on your T-Shirt. But... if that doesn't rate in your list of 'priorities', in the way that political revolution does... it's not a problem; if you can set Virtue and Vice aside, then the murderer is virtually transformed into a saint.

How has that been accomplished? I've already gone too long with this post, and I have gone into the details of what has happened to our schools in other posts, so I'll just point out the fact that the warning of where we were headed - which is where we find ourselves today - was first raised, not in the 1950's, but the 1920's... and even that was over sixty years too late.

Those Cassandra calls and missed warnings, did far worse than simply open us up for a military attack such as we suffered at Pearl Harbor, they opend us up for embracing a moral and intellectual attack upon our true heart and soul, our Virtues, which, as our Founders did their best to alert us, are our true strength and vulnerability, that Virtue is what made us Americans in the first place, and without which, we lose our exceptionalism.

Being a nation of ideas, which America always was, and still is today, the real battles we have been engaged in, the real war we've been losing, has been an intellectual and a spiritual one. Because of our failure to heed their warnings, we've been steadily losing the war most of us never even realized that we've been engaged in, and we've been losing it because of our inattention to it.

The first wave began with the philosophy of the 18th century, with little opposition to the philosophies of Rousseau, Kant and Hegel, they gained beachheads in our own turncoat philosophers of Pierce, William James and John Dewey and their Delta Force of Pragmatism. That gave us the educators of the 19th century, and their triumph delivered us up to incessant loss of territory we've yielded up through the daily assault in the classrooms.

From those new launching platforms we suffered through the cultural bombing runs of the hippies in the 1960's, which softened us up for the moral living room invasion, utilizing the brilliantly camouflaged landing craft vehicles such as M*A*S*H throughout the 1970's, and then the ever advancing boots on the ground that has been led by the likes of MTV, moving implacably forward in a steadily descending spiral of depravity from the 1980's down to today.

The popular culture of the 20th and 21st centuries has left us utterly dazed and confused. Without reinforcements, without ammunition, without the intelectual-military intelligence so necessary to track and counter attack the enemy, we have been overrun in so many quarters that we see many of our fellow Americans are entirely unaware of their position behind enemy lines; they are unimpressed and unconcerned about charges of vice - in fact they have become traits that are openly admired and pursued, and in doing so they give real material aid and comfort to the enemy.

Far worse than Pearl Harbor in 1941, this continuous assault has led us not only to 9/11 in 2001, but has so much more devastating than even the twin towers falling, they've leveled our moral defenses to the point that a Mosque is being openly built directly around the corner from Ground Zero, here in 2011 - this goes so far beyond any physical equivalent of 'they sunk my battleship', that it ain't funny.

The Alamo or Midway - Time will tell
If you want to know how so many of our fellows can stare at Occupy Wall Street and express no shock or surprise, you might get a glimpse of enemy territory with the fact that this guy, Bill Ayers, a terrorist, has been an influential teacher, a very popular teach TO teachers, across the nation, for decades.

“I think you should use your brilliance, your humor, your wisdom, your body to dramatize the violence that exists. But we do not live in a neutral — not when there’s a trillion dollar military budget — the biggest in the world, not when they’re recruiting kids to be in the service, not when every athletic event begins with guns and marching…that‘s a violent culture and that’s where we live…”

And with a flourish of lefty irony, he added,

"Somebody like Barack Obama who drone strikes American citizens is saying ‘I want you all to be non-violent.’ Well, I want you to be non-violent,”

Isn't that clever? What do you suppose he wanted kids to learn from that? Could it be that they've already learned it? A 'If you think that's violence, I'll show you violence!' And here we were all under the impression that our schools have been failing... apparently, not so much.

It is ugly.

This Occupy Wall Street movement is not noble, this is not inspiring, this is not in anyway shape or form, Good.

When the press lauds these grubby vandals and their 'youthful idealism' they aren't talking about real Virtues, but only virtual ones. Careful looking at the man behind the curtain. Occupy Wall Street is ugly, mean, filthy, cowardly, self-indulgent, reckless, wasteful, greedy, vain, lustful, untruthful, dishonest and unjust.

But other than that....

The Question is Liberty or Tyranny - is Your Answer the Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

In reply to my last post on the questions that lead to Liberty and a Free Market, my goad friend Lance asked:

"I would be more likely to agree with you on much of this Van. But I do not think we have had a "free market" in my lifetime and probably my grandparents. "

I'm not quite sure what Lance meant by that... since I've been saying and complaining about that fact for years, he couldn't have meant it as a piece of news for me... was it intended as an argument against seeking after something worthwhile, because it has not existed for some time, if ever?	Morpheus: This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."
If so, then how would you then ever argue for doing anything at all? Do you argue against seeking after the correct answer... because... you've been wrong for so long? Do wrong and false answers get some sort of tenure when we're talking about law and economics?

When I asked what he meant, he answered that he'd had it with Wall Streeter's & Occupiers (which I can sympathize with), and that,

"I am just tired of the 24 hr a day media cycle and the business of politics and the era of sound bite thinking as opposed to true thoughtful analysis."

Maybe Lance was just running head first into some sound byte-itis, I know he isn't the only one... but he's also not the only one letting that frustration dissuade them from the real issue at hand - and that's a problem that extends far beyond Lance's comments and into many, many peoples thoughts.

But... people... seriously... should you yield to the sound byte for or against anything? If an issue of substance, of significance, is raised, should you let the media or political sound bytes... or the equivalent presumptions of friends, distract you from pursuing the meat of the issue?

Free Market or Forced Market... that's a fairly significant choice, isn't it? The implications of your choice certainly are.

Should you let the media, politicians or friends reduce an issue of such significance, to the equivalent of a sound byte, by allowing them to simply say,

"Oh things aren't that simple!"

Really? In fact the issue IS that simple, though facing up to it might not be; but then you are faced with another simple issue - if something is difficult, do you face up to it, or do you do your best to avoid it?
If you agree in general with the answers which those questions provoked, why would you want to avoid them? Are you ever justified in swallowing the blue pill and going back into the Matrix? IMHO, the simple answer is No, you aren't, and you don't. You take the red pill, face up to the Truth, which only honestly questioning what you believe can reveal to you, and pursue the answers to wherever they might lead.

The Questions I posed in the last post are important questions, as are the answers which most rational people will find themselves arriving at - should they be denied because they are incompatible with what you may have been (perhaps mistakenly) supporting for years and years?

The Free Market has never fully existed, but it did more fully exist here, under our constitutional form of government, which was conducive to its growth, for a time, during the early years of our nation, and more so here than anywhere else in the world. And it was due to that approximation of the Free Market, that our explosive growth and prosperity resulted from, and it was because of that, that America came to represent freedom and liberty to the world, drawing such a true 'diversity' of people to immigrate to our shores. Is it possible to deny that? Can anyone seriously suggest that it was the ever more restrictive laws and regulations which hampered the Free Market, that resulted in our wealth and prosperity? If so, why didn't such wealth and prosperity occur in nations that were even more restrictive and more hostile to a Free Market and Property Rights, than ours was? Because of their 'people'?(I dunno... sounds a tad 'racist' to me.) That early approximation of a Free Market in America, took its first deliberate step backwards with the passage of the first proregressive 'reform', the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 (mentioned in this post a while back), and with each additional regulatory law and agency that has been established, our proregressive steps have taken us further from freedom, and closer to the political collusion of those having wealth and power and few scruples, in business and government - and insulating them from the reach of the Law and Justice, while distancing the people from participation in their own society - and the unavoidable loss of the liberty for each of us to live our own lives, has been the direct result of their reforms.

The Free Market brought us this: The New Colossus Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame. "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus, 1883 <>The Unfree Market has delivered us to this: The reeling housing market has come to this: To shore it up, two Senators are preparing to introduce a bipartisan bill Thursday that would give residence visas to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 to buy houses in the U.S. The provision is part of a larger package of immigration measures, co-authored by Sens. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Mike Lee (R., Utah), designed to spur more foreign investment in the U.S. The New Tone: Keep your dregs, sell us your rich Not like the golden heights of American fame, Upon the cities upon our hills now fire-sale signs; You must act now, lay your money down; Craven Senator's with winning words, and a wink, A once sacred land, the sellers name, Fathers of lies. For coin in hand Cry out midway barkers; flinty eyes demand Her land offered up upon the block ill famed, "The new world, yours for a song!" their jingle rings With sharpened smile. "Come you foreigners, get your visas, "For gold we'll sell you 'lady liberty'!, Crony kings yours for a steal! For a half a million dollars, a castle!, a wench for ye!, A Red, White & Blue light special... and more! Bipartisan Schumer & Lee, 2011

Not surprisingly, the willingness and ability of people to address problems on their own, or in associations or to form charitable organizations - and to support them - has decreased, as the power of the govt/business cronyism has grown - and it has grown, not in spite of, but because of, the regulatory state.

Ask yourself why it is that the first thought of those who want to 'Help the ___, (fill in the blank), is to turn to politicians in government, instead of turning directly to those of like mind in their own neighborhoods and society? Why would someone want to go through government... what does it offer them except interference? The truth is that they would not choose to, unless they are either being forcibly prevented from doing what they feel is right to do, unless they beg favors or permissions (aka permits) from govt ... or on the other hand, the go through government because they want to force others into doing what they want them to do?

One presumes and relies upon Liberty, and the other presumes and relies upon Tyranny... which would you prefer? The Red Pill... or the Blue Pill?

It comes down to this, if people are being wronged in some new way by an industry, technology, etc, then you pass a clear law to punish those who engage in such unjust actions, and include with that law clearly stated punishments, best suited to penalize them and re-compensate their victims. On the other hand, if you want to control what people do, if you want to promote some behaviors, and suppress others (which is a rejection of Free Will and Reason and an endorsement of Behavioristic and Utilitarian theories of stimulus response), if you want to increase your own power - political and/or economic - then you go about granting favors to those best able to further your interests, through regulations chock full of artfully inserted, and lucrative, loopholes.

If you want Justice, you pass Just, brief, clear laws and enforce them across the board, swiftly and as severely as justice demands and permits.

If you want power and wealth without having to suffer the burden and annoyance of intelligent effort, then you pursue regulations - as many of them as possible, the more extensive and unintelligible as possible - which rely upon the interpretations of faceless and traceless men to impose, or overlook, them as it is politically and/or financially expedient for the 'parties concerned' to do so.

The first option is open to anyone having the desire and ability to pursue them.

The second option is open only to those having the wealth and power to manipulate the system to their advantage.

Liberty or Tyranny - each has its characteristics.

Have you asked the questions necessary to enable you recognize which is which? Will you even ask which one is the Red Pill, and which one is the Blue Pill?

Occupy Your Own Street: Questions to ask yourself, If... Then... Use it or lose it!

Out of some exchanges with a communist organizer, some Occupy Wall Street’rs, and some regular folks just wondering how the heck to get our point across, here’s a few points and quick questions to ask yourself, your friends, relatives and neighbors, which might finally succeed in getting us all onto the battlefield where the war we've been losing, is actually being fought.

#1, if you are thinking that you should ‘Give the benefit of the doubt' to the people occupying Wall Street, or Occupying St. Louis, etc, then you first need to stop, and read Po’ed Patriot’s post on the thuggish reality behind them.

Then with that out of the way, I think we need to head towards the sound of the guns, by concentrating more on asking questions, than replying to them, because, to paraphrase Winston Churchill,

“We are a people separated from ourselves by a common language”.

The words and terms we’ve been taught to use to think with, are in the main, incorrect, do not convey what we expect them to, and in too many cases do not even apply anymore.

We think of Leftists as Liberals - they are not.

We are taught to think of ourselves as a Democracy – we are not.

We are taught to think that Capitalism is what our economic system has always been... it is not.

Or... at least, the system which most Tea Party Conservatives refer to when we think of Capitalism, is our traditional economic system, but what most other people think of when they think of Capitalism, is a relatively new innovation that has been destroying our true economic system for the last hundred years.

We began this nation with our Founding Fathers as Liberals, True Liberals, meaning those who believe that Man, if Educated (not degree’d, Educated – two very different things) and Virtuous, is capable of self-government, capable of living their lives in Liberty, and capable of interacting with each other in a Free Market. The Free Market was once thought of as the very defining term, expression and accomplishment, of being a Liberal! The nature of our original economic system, was that it wasn't really a system at all, there was no place in it for government, except to uphold the law, enforce legal contracts and collar the criminals - our 'system' was simply the result of free people interacting with each other without being under the thumb of the policies or payoffs and manipulations typically imposed upon a people by one king or another.

Our system was never referred to as ‘Capitalism’, until it’s arch-enemy, Karl Marx. named it that!

That can’t be good, can it?

No, no it can’t be good. We are a nation of ideas, and the main battleground we've always fought upon has been that of whether or not man is capable of living his own life, and if not, could he really be capable of ordering the life of another? It is the idea that drove people to come here. It was the cause of the Revolution. It was the driving force behind the Civil War. Our greatest mistake has been to think that once the Revolution was over, and the Constitution ratified and Slavery done away with, that that battle was over.

It wasn't.

The battle has been raging all along, and is still going on today, but it has moved off the physical battlefields, where the enemy could not win, and it moved into our own minds... where we didn't even realize we were being attacked. Our words, phrases, concepts and themes have been the tanks, planes, aircraft carriers and geographic strongholds of this war - and we have been conceding nearly every one of them.

Occupy Your Own Street - It Is The Fight You Can Fight, Now!
An organizer for the communist youth league, recently told Patch Adams, of Po’ed Patriot... after attempting to dump out a cartload of Marxist manure at his site, that

"I in my heart believe that the majority of Americans believe the same thing despite their understanding that we call that socialism."

Well, in my heart, I’m quite certain that Americans believe no such thing, but the labels they’ve been given to use, lead them, like a trail of bread crumbs, down a false trail and to a place where “X” marks the spot, and Socialism is what's on the nameplate at that address.

But that is not either our home or our destination. Knock on that door, my friend, and Hell will be pleased to usher you in.

I’d advise against that.

So how do we begin fighting the actual battle for America? Start by getting past the words which no longer mean what we think they mean, and in fact serve to put us at odds with each other. This was driven home to me by a video one of our St. Louis people took while talking with the occupiers. Some of them, it was painfully obvious, were lost causes, but a surprising number of them had a grasp of the same ideas which we do... but because they'd bought into the re-purposed names, they were unwittingly there fighting on the side of their own enemies.

We first need to take back the questions by not using the most disputed words when asking them -we can deal with the words we use as 'answers' afterwards. Start by asking questions that don't involve the disputed ground, and start taking the fight to the enemy in your own mind and on your very own street, amongst your very own friends and relatives and neighbors. But before doing that though, there's a very key point you need to understand - this is a very strange war... if you start off by being confrontational, you lose the fight; the disputed ground succeeds in lifting the drawbridge, raising its defenses, and you never even get the opportunity to scratch it.

We can't win this with a war of words... and believe me, that goes against my grain... big time!

The only way we can get within striking distance of the real battlefield, is from the inside - and that can only be accomplished by getting our friends, relatives and neighbors, to ask some key questions of themselves - they have to fight the battle, our job is only to supply them with the ammunition to do so, and that can only be done by getting them to ask themselves the questions that will expose the enemy to the truth in their own minds.

Once that's done... it collapses. The enemy is a lie, it has no real defenses, it is utterly exposed and prostrate before the Truth... but it can only be put into that position by its unwitting defender - your friend, relative, neighbor (and possibly even yourself) - exposing it themselves, and that can only be done by their actually questioning their own premises.

Accomplish that, and the fight is as good as over, the battle won without having to be fought - Sun Tzu would like that.

If... Then...
So, here ya go, here are some questions to walk yourself through, and out into, the opening skirmish of the real war. Taking this ground will help put you, your friends, relatives and neighbors, onto the right path to understanding your positions correctly; do that, and the lie can be exposed. Once it is, then they will begin questioning their positions themselves, and the Truth can begin doing the work you could never have hoped to accomplish - once that happens the was is over; once these fundamentals are understood, then what words are best to use to label the answers for these questions can be argued over, harmlessly, endlessly, for years afterwards. Academics have to have something to do.

* Do you believe a person should be free to make their own choices? Should a persons life be their own?
If so, then congratulations, you've won the most important battle of all, you believe in free will, and you believe that man is capable of governing himself.

* If you actually believe in a person’s freedom to make their own choices, then you must believe in their right to retain the fruits of those choices, and their right to conduct themselves, to speak their mind freely and to assemble with those fellows they choose to, without fear of recrimination, violence, intimidation or of having their property taken from them - does that seem reasonable?

Well that is what is meant by supporting Individual Rights and Property Rights. Congratulations, you're on your way to becoming an American in more ways than simply by a certificate of live birth.

* If you believe in a person’s freedom to make their own choices and to be secure in their Individual Rights and Property, then you must also believe that people should be free to offer their services and products for the consideration of other free peoples, and if another is interested, to be free to come to an agreement for compensation with them, without fear of threats of physical force and intimidation, right?

Then congratulations again, you believe in the Right to Contract.

* Do you believe that people should have a right to make their own decisions about what they would like to eat, wear, shelter, protect, read, adorn or amuse themselves with? Do you believe that people should be free to exchange with other people, for some mutually agreed to amount of their own property, for those items? Do you believe that they should be free to do so without the threat of intimidation and physical force by either party or from some third party?

Then congratulations, you believe in the Free Market.

* Do you believe that anyone who threatens to, or who actually exerts force to compel people to act against their own wishes, or who robs or swindles them of what is theirs, or to otherwise deliberately or negligently injure or endanger them, do you believe that they should be fined and or imprisoned - No Matter WHO they are or what their position in society, business or government, is?

Then congratulations, you believe in the Rule of Law.

* Do you believe that people in a society should be able to agree upon general norms of conduct, and to establish laws to uphold and defend their lives, rights and property from the abuse of anyone else, foreign or domestic? Do you believe that these rules and laws should be written and publicly accessible to all, and that no one should be able to improperly alter or manipulate those rules and laws for their personal benefit?

Then congratulations, you believe in a Western form of government.

* Do you believe that it is the responsibility of those in that society who are protected by that government, to aid in supporting that government? That there can be no right to not support the institution which defends and upholds the Rights of everyone in that society?

Then congratulations, you believe that there is no right to evade proper taxation (yeah, well... some Rights are more enjoyable than others... but unfortunately no less necessary!).

* Do you believe that no one should be able to abuse another, intimidate them, force them to act against their will or to take what rightly belongs to another? Do you believe that simply having a majority of the people present saying that they'd like to abuse another person in that way, does not make it okay to do so? Do you believe that even if that majority of the people REALLY wants to, and even writes it down as a rule that it's now okay to abuse a particular person or people, because a majority of the people agree that they REALLY want to do it; do you believe that even then, such a thing would still be wrong and so must not be allowed to be done?

Then congratulations, you DO NOT believe in a Democracy, what you believe in is called a Republic, and only in a Republic is the person, rights and property of a minority, protected by law.

* Do you believe that members of a community should be able to choose from those amongst themselves who they believe are best suited to maintaining, amending or writing new laws, and to represent them in their government?

Then congratulations, what you believe in is a Constitutional Representative Republic, and your ideas are compatible with being a Citizen of the United States of America.

* Do you believe in the "Abolition of private property"? You do? EHHHhhhh... Ooh, sorry, sorry, no, if you believe in that, or any obfuscatory way of edging towards that, then you reject every one of the preceding points above; if you believe that, then you are a Communist, and no matter your best of intentions - which were also doubtlessly shared by those who supported and formed the USSR, Mao's Red China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc - then your system will result in nothing but death and destruction because violence, and the threat of it, the abandonment of objective law and true rights, the abolishment of contract and even the denial of the potential of individual human worth, is what must follow from your best intentions, as Hell always does.

I think if we lose hold of these questions... then there will be no battles left to win.Why?

Because what results from asking the preceding questions, is the only known way, to secure to each individual the right to engage in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, on their own terms, and the only known, proven, method for structuring such a government, is the Constitution of the United States of America.

The reasons for why that is, can be found in a quote from John Adams, which I've noted often in the past, when he was helping to more clearly define the purpose of a Republic for his fellow Founding Fathers, that the purpose of a Republic, was the protection of Property Rights:

"...the original meaning of the word republic could be no other than a government in which the property of the people predominated and governed; and it had more relation to property than liberty. It signified a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them, was secured and protected by law. This idea, indeed, implies liberty; because property cannot be secure unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use, or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose. It implies, moreover, that the property and liberty of all men, not merely of a majority, should be safe; for the people, or public, comprehends more than a majority, it comprehends all and every individual; and the property of every citizen is a part of the public property, as each citizen is a part of the public, people, or community. The property, therefore, of every man has a share in government, and is more powerful than any citizen or party of citizens; it is governed only by the law...."

And through his extensive study of history, he found that the reason for this is, that

"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "Thou shalt not covet," and "Thou shalt not steal," were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free."

What Adams and many others of the time realized, was that without a solid support for property rights, no other rights are even possible, and if these questions are not understood, no amount of legislation can uphold or enforce them.

And with that in mind, it is equally important to note that Karl Marx felt that the most important, distinguishing aspect of his theory of Communism, was one that he could sum up very simply, he said that:

" In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

That goal, the abolition of private property, is the purpose behind the methods of communism, of socialism, of progressivism and of fascism, they differ from each other only in their styles of governing, and how quickly and fully they feel they can proceed towards their shared ultimate goal of abolishing private property. Whatever good intentions they and their supporters may have, the fact is, as it has played out again and again in history, from the USSR to Cambodia and all points in between, their schemes will bring only death and destruction, because the target of their power - private property and the mutual respect for it - is the only thing which can make it possible for people to live together in freedom.

The path Marx beckons you down doesn't end well. It never has, it never will. If you choose this thing, Then you will lose your liberty and loose death and destruction across the land.

Wake up America, talk to your friends and neighbors, Occupy your own mind, Occupy your own street! You have the greatest political treasure of all the ages right here in your hands, right now, the United States Constitution, help your friends, relatives and neighbors to understand it by thinking through the questions that led to it, and then learn to use it... or lose it.

Chess-eckers - Easy questions and hard answers

♫ ♪ ♬ What are words for, when no one listens anymore.... ♬ ♪ ♫
If I ask how to best win a game, the easy answer is: with a winning strategy.

M'kay, true enough.
If I ask how to overcome a lie, the easy answer is: with the truth.

Yep, also true.

But.

What if you sat down to a tournament game of Checkers, and in between moves and conversation, the game was transformed into Chess, and the chess pieces are only identified with a coded label under each piece... and if you touch a piece, you have to move it? And those crowded around to watch your game are not only fine with that and agree with that, but deny it was ever different and they won't let you change the game back or quit it?

Now, how do you overcome the lies surrounding you, what is the winning strategy, when the crowd watching you are as much a part of the game as the pieces on the board?

Maybe the first step is realizing that those gathered around the game, are not the only ones in the room - there are many more who came to the tournament, but who lost interest when they saw the game had changed.

In our world, those gathered around the table, 'educators', press, intellectuals, political players, all insist on playing the transformed game, and they don't intend to allow you to stop playing.

They are outnumbered, but they are outnumbered by people who don't know that, people who are either not willing to play the game, or who when they look up, see only those standing around the table, and don't realize that "WE" surround "THEM".

People like Glenn Beck and Hank Williams say to stop trying to figure out which piece is which, stop playing the transformed game, return to playing Checkers. But the problem is that that requires everyone out there, to stop going on living their lives, and stand up, deny the game has changed, and push them away from the table.

Problem is that those standing around the table are armed.

Are you?

I don't mean with guns, but with ideas.

Those standing around the tables are armed with the words they've put into your head - they control what your words mean, not only do they refuse to allow you to use any others, you don't have the words or ideas necessary to expose them, and you react, you dance, to the words and tunes they call.

• They yell RACIST!!! and you react.
  You're NOT a racist, but you don't want to be called one, so you don't say or do what you were thinking of doing because you don't want to be called that.
• They yell FASCIST!!! and you react.
  You're NOT a fascist, but you don't want to be called one, so you don't say or do what you were thinking of doing because you don't want to be called that.
• They yell HOMOPHOBE!!! and you react.
  You're NOT a homophobe, but you don't want to be called one, so you don't say or do what you were thinking of doing because you don't want to be called that.

THEY are armed with your own mind, and they are using it against you.

They've sold their idea of what the game is, they've sold the idea that you have to analyze what each piece is by some hidden feature that only some select and credentialed few know about, but don't you dare touch a piece, or you'll be committed to moving it - RACIST!!! FASCIST!!! HOMOPHOBE!!!

Ask Hank Williams if you don't know what I mean.

A friend nailed it earlier this morning: "The issue is the defense of our free market system."

Absolutely yes. Part of that defense requires that we stop aiding the assault upon it. It is, and always was, the Free Market - stop calling it anything else. Capitalism was the term Marx popularized because it took the idea of Freedom off the table, and painted the entire system as a tool of money management.

Unless you like being a 'Human Resource', stop calling it Capitalism, and call it by what we all expect it to be: The Free Market. Only the later will allow you to live your own life.
Another touched on the issue when he said we don't have a bogeyman anymore... we can see him, we can see him shitting all over our flag right in front of our faces, but we aren't able to identify him. It's like we're stumbling around after the Tower of Babel, none of our words identifies them for what they are, none of them raises an alarm - too many people think all of our words and names mean something else.

I am as Frustrated as hell. I'm trying to tell my friends and neighbors that those people they think 'mean well' are latent murderers - not because they intend to, but because they are acting under the power of ideas that will end up driving them to slaughter their children in front of their faces.

He doesn't understand a God damn thing I'm saying.

People came out in droves to fight a socialist bill in D.C., but I can hardly get them to raise an eyebrow over actual communists taking over their city squares.
We sat down to the game of life with the Constitution and Natural Rights, and we find ourselves sitting at a game with a living dead set of constitutional interpretations and a Czarfull of political regulatory agencies.

We need to stop playing the game. That's obvious. How?

Hank Williams song is being downloaded like crazy. Maybe I'm just talking to the wrong people. It seems that some people out there still understand what plain words mean.

How do we get them back in the game? Help me get them back in the game. Hey! You! Yeah, that's right, I'm talking TO YOU!

Get in the game, and do it now, because these people are not playing around.

Five dangerous questions to Occupy the occupied.

Lets put the kibosh on some dangerously misleading questions that are occupying the minds of people preoccupied by those Occupying Wall Street, and other cities across America.

1 - “Where did the Occupy Wall Street protesters come from?”
I've heard this question often and I find it hard to take it seriously that they are seriously asking it, because it is the easiest question to answer. Here’s a clue from the Missouri University system, our own Professor of communism, violence and rioting (aka Labor Studies), Judy Ancel, as she made a comment to a crowd of Occupy squatters in Kansas City,

“It is so great to see that so many of you are outraged,” Judy Ancel, a labor studies professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, told the crowd. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”

Yes, she certainly has been waiting a long time. She’s been agitating for mass riot and revolt since the Seattle WTO riots, and even earlier. If you remember Prof. Ancel, she co-led the UMSL/UMKC class that indoctrinated college kids in the uses of violence, or the threat of violence, in order to get favorable bargaining positions.

Those were the class examples which she, and fellow communist organizer, Don Giljum, used in their class instruction, but the point of the instruction was to drive home the lesson that the 'Ends Justify the Means', that no matter what levels you have to sink to, however violent or debauched you behavior may become, it is ok, as long as your ends, your goals, are 'noble' and well intentioned.

And were their lessons learned? What do you think?

"Among the hardcore of well-intentioned protesters sleeping rough in Zuccotti Park are also the children of the wealthiest ‘one per cent’ – taking a break from classes at private schools to show their solidarity… and join the fun.

As millionaire celebrities pledged allegiance to the protesters despite very healthy bank balances, MailOnline spoke to youngsters who have joined the movement, many of whom study at colleges which cost their parents up to $200,000."

Yeah. They learned it all right. And whaddayawanna bet that Mom & Pop, are proud of their little investments? These parents, and their children, are prime examples of what our educational system is designed to produce, and if Professors like Judy Ancel get their way, no child will be left behind.

2 - 'But I'm sure they mean well... don't they?' - What remains after assenting to the 'Ends Justify the Means'
Not surprisingly this was also Stalin’s excuse for starving millions of Ukranians to death in order to reform the agricultural system. Mao’s too. It was also Hitler’s excuse for slaughtering millions of Jews, Slavs and others, to improve Germany, for the greater good, because, after all, 'Ends Justify the Means'. Same with Robespierre, who in the French Revolution, began cutting off the heads of not just the Royals, but of everyone who disagreed with him… for the betterment of the movement, for the betterment of France, for the greater good.

Why?

Because the Ends Justify the Means. It is a lesson our society has been teaching with, an American slant, for over a century now.

From this position on the (presumed, by them) moral high ground, it’s ok to presume

• ... that businesses would be guilty of doing the wrong thing if allowed the freedom to make their own decisions, so we'd better to regulate their every action (unless politically well-connected enough to get a loophole) before they can, to ensure ‘acceptable’ behavior for the greater good. IOW, their rights to think, act and assemble are abridged, because those in power think it'll benefit the greater good... and they are ok doing that because - the Ends Justify the Means.
• ...Affirmative Action says it is ok to discriminate against some people, because others were discriminated against before. It is ok to violate the rights of businessmen and force them to deal with a union, because they only want what’s best for their workers.
• ...It’s ok to forbid smoking in your own establishment, for the greater good. It’s okay to forbid you from using ‘too much salt’, it’s for the greater good. “Imposing Cap & Trade would necessarily cause power plants to fail and energy costs to skyrocket”, but it advances a ‘good’ green agenda… for the greater good.
• ...It’s okay to take the wealth of the nation to bail out politically well-connected banks and corporations, because they are ‘too big to fail”, it’s all for the greater good, and as we’ve all been taught so well, the Ends Justify The Means.

That is in fact nearly the only lesson that our schools, through vermin like Professor Ancel, have succeeded in teaching American children for well over a century… which is how it finally came to be accepted in America, a nation which was founded in opposition to that very notion.

Fairness is the ‘End’ which is used to justify their means, and Rights are no longer taught, except as a word pasted over goodies you hope to be given.

3 - Isn't this about Freedom of Speech and Assembly?
Even boneheads like Ron Paul, are falling for this one,

" what he made of the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests, which have included a noticeable contingency of Paul supporters. On Thursday night, for example, a group of young men assembled at Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan were wielding anti-Federal Reserve placards and promoting Paul's presidential campaign. "If they were demonstrating peacefully," Paul told me, "and making a point, and arguing our case, and drawing attention to the Fed–I would say, good!""

This is not about their freedom of assembly or free speech – I’ve no doubt that most Tea Party people would defend their right to that, because we understand that all of our rights would be in jeopardy – if some people unjustly lose their rights, then all of us do.



They are violating the rights of all of us... for the greater good, and they can feel morally satisfied and oh so superior, because...- their Ends Justify their Means.

So with that in mind, have another look at our protesters.

Have a look at that wistful gaze at the image of a CEO’s head on a pike. What do you suppose will follow from that? Today the Occupiers are planning to march past the homes of 'the rich' - if there happens to be no violence, do you think that will be because of, or in spite of, such sentiments?

Think about it.

Something else you really should understand about the philosophy of “The Ends Justify the Means”, there is nothing in those ends, that says they must be attainable. That’s right. You only have to intend that they be good, fair, etc. That intent, your desire that it be good and fair, is enough. When in the 2008 Democrat Primary Debates, Obama was pressed that cutting capital gains taxes would raise more taxes than increasing them, Obama answered twice, that it was more important to impose fairness upon all (and by that he meant raising taxes on those who earn more than (then) $200k), even if it meant possibly losing the revenue you were raising the taxes to achieve.

With a deft twist, their Intentions take precedence over their stated ends, and any means 'reasonably necessary' become justifiable in the pursuit of them, even if they are understood to be unattainable.
Those of you rattling on about 'Don't be ridiculous, no one is saying that!' or 'It couldn't go that far' are mistakenly reasoning that their intention is to achieve their ends. It is not. It is to act on their intentions to achieve their ends. Whether or not they will, or even can, is immaterial to them.

This OWS person tries to evade the issue, tries to clothe herself in 'reasonableness'

“We aren’t arguing for socialism, we aren’t arguing for capitalism”

But it's a good idea to remember that the New York Times declared that 'Reason is no longer a tool for truth, but a weapon to win arguments - logically or illogically doesn't matter, only winning does'.

Why? Go on - guess.

The real focus for us should be what they say they are for, and what they say they are for are unattainable Utopian ideals. It doesn't matter in the least what good intentions they tell themselves they desire to attain, what matters is that they ARE unattainable, and that the only way to attempt to attain them, is the same way that people have attempted to attain them since Robespierre, by depriving others of their Rights – and they will destroy the rights – and lives - of everyone else in the process of pursuing them.

If they gain the least bit of momentum, all of their good intentions will mean nothing at all, they will lead to nothing but death and destruction in fact.

IOW, the unintelligible, fractious message, and the angry sense that someone has somehow wronged them...IS their message, they believe that those actions advance their intentions... and that is all they need to feel morally satisfied and superior. Even as they crap on police cars, or the flag... or [insert anything near and dear to you that might be in their way or just serve as a convenient excuse for making a 'statement'].
Others have even said that we shouldn't indict the entire movement for the unwise actions of a few.

That isn’t the issue. And indicting the 'movement' for the actions of a few isn't either. The real issue is in what they say they are for - unattainable Utopian ideals. It doesn't matter in the least what good intentions they tell themselves they desire to attain, what matters is that they ARE unattainable, and that the only way to attempt to attain them, is the same way that people have attempted to attain them since Robespierre, by depriving others of their Rights – and they will destroy the rights – and lives - of everyone else in the process.

If they gain the least bit of momentum, all of their good intentions will mean nothing at all, they will lead to nothing but death and destruction in fact.

4 - This is about the Govt/Business partnership! It's about the bailouts!
Really? Who has done more to mingle and unite the government with corporations, than this congress and this administration? What are the stated aims of these protesters, Bill Ayers, and everyone else?

They want to pass laws and regulations which will involve the government, and its agencies and its regulatory bureaucracy, in the intimate details of not only the largest corporations in America, but the smallest of businesses.

Have you looked at Obama care? Have you looked at who is getting exemptions from it? Do you think they are the smallest, or the largest, of businesses? The largest corporations, friends of Obama, G.E., AFL-CIO (yeah, that's a BIG business), have received exemptions because they have the wealth on hand to influence those who make the rules, and the aim of those who make the rules is the famous proregressive third way - to combine government and corporations!

These people are NOT for getting govt out of business, but for uniting them into a single, seamless whole, socialization by other means, is socialization all the same.

5 - So then what is your answer?!
As I said in my last post, if you want a useful answer, make sure you are asking a useful question, then you have a chance of getting an answer that's worth considering. My answer is to ask the right questions - Do you want to live your own life? If so, what will that require?

• Is your goal to ensure that corporations do not have power over you?
  * There is only one system which can take that power away from them.
• Do you want to put an end to government granting favors to corporations?
  * There is only one system which can prevent the government from granting favors to corporations.
• Do you want to live your own life without interference from either the government or from corporations?
  * There is only one system which can ensure you of that.

The only answer is to bring real, radical change to America, not by transforming it, but by fulfilling it! That can only be accomplished by bringing America home to the Free Market.

How?

The Free Market requires establishing a wall of separation between business and state.

In a free market, those who infringe upon, negligently endanger, violate the rights of, or take the property of another, are subject to the swift and severe long arm of the law and the hand of Justice.

It is only when you begin to merge them, 'for the greater good', that you make politicians financially useful tools for the rich and powerful, and it is only through mingling the interests of business and state, that businesses can become vulnerable prey for corrupt politicians.

Do not fool yourself - if you are arguing for more regulations, then you are arguing for giving government access to corporate power and influence, and you are giving the biggest, most corruption friendly corporations, direct access to the power of the government. If you are advocating taking the property from anyone, then you are arguing for the elimination of Individual Rights, and advocating for giving the politically powerful the ability to grant favors to it's friends... and take them from those they dislike.

If you are arguing for taking away the right of people to make their own choices, and keep the results of those choices, you are arguing against the Free Market.

The Free Market is nothing other than a society where people are free to live their own lives, make their own decisions, and count on the government and rule of law to uphold and defend their rights and property from crooks and thieves.

Btw, if you are arguing against, or for, ‘Capitalism’, then what you are arguing upon, is the playing field Karl Marx arranged for you.

Why?

Ever try to argue with an American, even one of these OWS idiots, that they should NOT be Free to make their own choices? That’s a losing strategy. But if you can get them to argue about a financial technique, the management of capital, then even the ones defending it, secretly feels guilty about it.

That was Marx’s most brilliant, and most successful move.

But remember, we are fighting for the Free Market, so that you, your family, friends and neighbors, will be free to make those choices and agreements which they choose as being worthwhile, and that no one should be able to prevent them from making their own choices, or from keeping the results of those choices, their property.

That is the Free Market.

If you are truly for fairness, for true justice and true liberty, then that is what you should be protesting for... anything else is only a direct, or indirect, assault upon your own life, liberty and pursuit of happiness - and allowing irrelevant questions to distract you from that core truth, is dangerous.