Happy ObamaoDay! See you in November! The Once and Future Constitution

I've barely had time to begin looking at the SCOTUS decision on ObamaoCare, though there are a couple snippets of the dissent I'll offer up for consideration, but It's far too late tonight to say much more, so I'll just offer up a couple comments made in the course of the day.

First off, two exceedingly relevant quotes:

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer "universal health care.""

Thomas Sowell - Smartest man in the world

"An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. A question of constitutional power can hardly be made to depend on a question of more or less."

Chief Justice John Marshall McCulloch v. Maryland

Two random thoughts unjustly separated by centuries of time.

About the SCOTUS decision, I can't say that I was too much surprised by it, or by the fact that it was upheld as a Tax, rather than through further abuse of the commerce clause. Taxation was the only wooden leg it had to stand on, it was the one thing which Obamao swore up and down so often that it absolutely was not, a tax... and was the one thing he promptly turned around and sent his solicitor to sell it as - a tax.

(The one potentially encouraging news of the day may be that the SCOTUS decision to call it a tax, may initiate a devastating series of attacks)


To save the U.S., We The People need to relearn the ideas which had to be understood in order for our nation to be founded in the first place. If we don't understand what our Rights are & what they mean, how can we possibly expect our govt to respect them? If We The People don't understand the nature of our Rights, then our Rights will be unknown.

It's just basic math.

It was already late when I got to sit down and begin reading through the decision, but fortunately my usual go-to Justice, Justice Thomas, had only a small addition to the dissent and it was short and sweet and right on target, taking up an entire paragraph:

JUSTICE THOMAS, dissenting.

I dissent for the reasons stated in our joint opinion, but I write separately to say a word about the Commerce Clause. The joint dissent and THE CHIEF JUSTICE correctly apply our precedents to conclude that the IndividualMandate is beyond the power granted to Congress un-der the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Under those precedents, Congress may regulate“economic activity [that] substantially affects interstatecommerce.” United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560 (1995). I adhere to my view that “the very notion of a ‘substantial effects’ test under the Commerce Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding of Congress’ powers and with this Court’s early Commerce Clause cases.” United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 627 (2000) (THOMAS, J., concurring); see also Lopez, supra, at 584–602 (THOMAS, J., concurring); Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U. S. 1, 67–69 (2005) (THOMAS, J., dissenting). As I have explained, the Court’s continued use of that test “has encouraged the Federal Government to persist in its view that the Commerce Clause has virtually no limits.” Morrison, supra, at 627. The Government’s unprecedentedclaim in this suit that it may regulate not only economic activity but also inactivity that substantially affects interstate commerce is a case in point.

The main dissent, written by, I think, Scalia, I was only able to begin, but the beginning is promissing, with:

... The case is easy and straightforward, however, in another respect. What is absolutely clear, affirmed by thetext of the 1789 Constitution, by the Tenth Amendmentratified in 1791, and by innumerable cases of ours in the 220 years since, is that there are structural limits upon federal power—upon what it can prescribe with respect to private conduct, and upon what it can impose upon thesovereign States. Whatever may be the conceptual limitsupon the Commerce Clause and upon the power to taxand spend, they cannot be such as will enable the Federal Government to regulate all private conduct and to compel the States to function as administrators of federal programs.

That clear principle carries the day here. The striking case of Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U. S. 111 (1942), whichheld that the economic activity of growing wheat, even for one’s own consumption, affected commerce sufficientlythat it could be regulated, always has been regarded as the ne plus ultra of expansive Commerce Clause jurisprudence. To go beyond that, and to say the failure to grow wheat (which is not an economic activity, or any activityat all) nonetheless affects commerce and therefore can befederally regulated, is to make mere breathing in and out the basis for federal prescription and to extend federal power to virtually all human activity.

As for the constitutional power to tax and spend for the general welfare: The Court has long since expandedthat beyond (what Madison thought it meant) taxing and spending for those aspects of the general welfare that werewithin the Federal Government’s enumerated powers, see United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, 65–66 (1936).Thus, we now have sizable federal Departments devoted to subjects not mentioned among Congress’ enumeratedpowers, and only marginally related to commerce: the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment. The principal practical obstacle that prevents Congress from using the tax-and-spend power to assume all the general-welfare responsibilities traditionally exercised by the States is the sheer impossibility of managing a Federal Government large enough to administer such a system. That obstacle can be overcome bygranting funds to the States, allowing them to administer the program. That is fair and constitutional enough whenthe States freely agree to have their powers employed andtheir employees enlisted in the federal scheme. But it is a blatant violation of the constitutional structure when the States have no choice."

and, on "The Individual Mandate":

... If this provision “regulates” anything, it is the failure to maintain minimum essential coverage. One might argue that it regulates that failure by requiring it to be accompanied by payment of a penalty. But that failure—that abstention from commerce—is not “Commerce.” To be sure, purchasing insurance is ”Commerce”; but one does not regulate commerce that does not exist by compelling its existence.

In Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1, 196 (1824), Chief Justice Marshall wrote that the power to regulate commerce is the power “to prescribe the rule by whichcommerce is to be governed.” That understanding is con- sistent with the original meaning of “regulate” at the time of the Constitution’s ratification, when “to regulate” meant“[t]o adjust by rule, method or established mode,” 2 N.Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828); “[t]o adjust by rule or method,” 2 S. Johnson,A Dictionary of the English Language (7th ed. 1785); “[t]oadjust, to direct according to rule,” 2 J. Ash, New and Complete Dictionary of the English Language (1775); “toput in order, set to rights, govern or keep in order,” T.Dyche & W. Pardon, A New General English Dictionary (16th ed. 1777).1 It can mean to direct the manner of something but not to direct that something come into being. There is no instance in which this Court or Congress (or anyone else, to our knowledge) has used “regulate”in that peculiar fashion. If the word bore that meaning, Congress’ authority “[t]o make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces,” U. S. Const., Art. I, §8, cl. 14, would have made superfluous the later provision for authority “[t]o raise and supportArmies,” id., §8, cl. 12, and “[t]o provide and maintain a Navy,” id., §8, cl. 13.

We do not doubt that the buying and selling of health insurance contracts is commerce generally subject to federal regulation. But when Congress provides that (nearly) all citizens must buy an insurance contract, it goes beyond “adjust[ing] by rule or method,” Johnson, supra, or “direct[ing] according to rule,” Ash, supra; it directs the creation of commerce.

So Now What
I'll direct you to my two previous posts this week, Two posts this week on just that: "You have No 'Constitutional Rights'. None. Nada." and "Rights from the source... so to speak", and remind all, that this election isn't just about good and bad political policy, but about fundamental philosophy, and it pits us against a deliberately destructive (to principles of American governance), consciously anti-American administration. That's a situation that requires us as voters to do more than express our disapproval at the ballot box, it requires that we use our ballots in self-defense - it must be stopped. 


Simply registering support for other candidates and ideas is inadequate, the current proregressive direction we're heading down must be stopped, and the only way of doing that, that I can see, is by putting my x by the ballot option most likely to have a chance of DEFEATing Obama.

Not registering disapproval, Defeating.

Voting is Not our primary responsibility as citizens however, it is not enough to Vote and go home until the next election; a citizen must put effort into supporting and spreading the ideas they see as important so that when the next election comes around, those ideas might be more reflected in the options on the ballot - and in the people voting on them.

I'll continue as best as I can, working to spread the ideas that enabled our nation to be founded in the first place, trying to educate people on what our govt Should be, and YOU must do the same.

It is the only way that we can rid ourselves of candidates such as Obama AND Romney.

That is the only alternative we have open to us, the only one there has ever been - to push back against the real power that has always been opposing us, philosophy and its rusty needle of public education which has been used to mainline anti-American ideals into our intellectual bloodstream.

America is a nation of ideas. That is, and always has been, the only place we have been open to any real damaging attack, it is the never-ending battle, and we've barely fired a shot on this battlefield for over 150 yrs, though we have been shot and wounded upon it, repeatedly.

Our first critical wound struck us back in the early 1800's, when Justice Taney decided in "Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge" to render his judgment against Property Rights for the 'greater good', at which point Daniel Webster muttered that that was

"The death of property rights".

We suffered a more dire wound with Justice Taney's next winner of a 'judgment' in deciding that Dred Scott was justified in being considered property, not man. The greatest tragedy of the Civil War that followed that, is that we never really understood the nature of the battle we were engaged in.

We thought it was simply a shooting war. We couldn't have been more wrong. As impressive and destructive as the shooting war was, the real war was going on in philosophy and education, and they absolutely won the field, with the Morrill Act for Land Grant Colleges being passed, as a war measure, with the intent of making thoughts of rebellion impossible from there out... they literally established Federal input into the Educational system of America, in order to influence and control the ideas our children would be taught.

They succeeded.

There were other cases: the Louisiana Slaughter Houses cases, Plessy v. Ferguson, and the next big hit, the 1907 case Wilson v. Shaw, where the SCOTUS officially gave Congress the power "to construct interstate highways" under its newly discovered constitutional right to regulate interstate commerce. With the constitution in such a walking-wounded state as that, the 16th & 17th amendments gutted it of its defenses, and its demise was plain to see when Justice McReynolds took grievous note of our condition in 1935 when FDR stuck the dagger in with the Gold Clause cases, taking a hold of powers he had ABSOLUTELY NO constitutional power to take. McReynolds said then that:

"Congress had no power to destroy the gold clause commitment. FDR is Nero at its worse. As for the Constitution, it doesn't seem to much to say, that it is gone"

And he was right. It was.

We've only just realized it today.

Does anyone really think that people getting riled up over this decision, is going to change all of that? At the ballot box?! Does anyone really think... that we can regain all of that lost ground back, simply by voting For (___ insert useless candidate name here)?

Sorry, but as good for the soul as laughter can be, that won't even stifle a sneeze, let alone reanimate our Constitution or the American people.

But it is a start, and one we have to take. I just caution against heaping too much 'hope and change' upon it. The coming elections, and the candidates we'll have to choose from, will likely not be anyone or anything we want to battle for, but they will serve as political beach heads & fox holes, nothing more. We've got to take them, and hold their ground, but never think that they are what we are fighting for.

Tactical ground, nothing more.

We've got a long, long, haul ahead of us. No shortcuts. No marketing solutions. We either take the time and effort to learn again what it means to be an American, or we leave it to ferment for a thousand years for the next people to give it a whirl.

Sorry, no time to link cases and references up, I'll be lucky to run SpellCheck, will try to in the morning. Maybe add a cheerier conclusion too. We'll see.

But let me add just one more note. With all the talk of the 'Death of Liberty', the 'Death of the Constitution', of 'Freedom of Choice has met it's Death Panel', while in some sense, that may be true, there's something else to keep in mind: The nice thing about a Constitution is that it isn't itself a living breathing creature - it lives and breathes through us, through We The People, and if we awaken ourselves, if we fill ourselves again with the ideas which originally animated our Constitution, then it may become the Once and Future Constitution.

It is, as it always was, up to We The People to decide.

Principles Left Behind: The Rush to Slut-Gate and Esau’s Pottage pt 3 of 3

Trading Truth for Tidbits
I began these three posts (first and second) because of how people were responding to the over the top statements and charges made by Sandra Fluke in support of the Obama administration’s Health Insurance Mandates; responding to Fluke & Friends as if they were honestly trying to convince you of something, rather than (very successfully) manipulating the opposition (you), into helping them further their own agenda - and bury yours. Since the first of these posts the media has shifted focus to the latest firestorm and away from Rush Limbaugh’s ‘horrific’ questions of whether or not a woman who needs $,3000 of contraception to make it through law school might reasonably be considered a ‘Slut’; unfortunately that shift has enabled the Fluke flaks to escape with nary a mention of this tidbit of news: “Fluke-associated ‘reproductive justice’ group hosts ‘Slut-Pride’ event at Harvard” ,

“Radio talk show giant Rush Limbaugh has been condemned by nearly every sector of the feminist and left-wing movements for using the term “slut” to refer to 30-year-old contraception activist and Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke — but at Harvard’s “Sex Week” Monday the Harvard affiliate of Law Students for Reproductive Justice championed the term with its own “Slut-Pride” seminar.”

Seriously, could they make my point more clearly than that? Do I really need to make my point more clearly than that? I think... maybe I still do, because while the media storm has changed, the tactics, whether the Fluke flaks or those capitalizing on the Trayvon Martin tragedy, have remained the same.

What was my point? You might find it in comparing what had been cited as Rush’s offensiveness, using the word ‘slut’ in relation to hard working Ivy League law students, while the next week finds that these hard working Ivy League Law Students are festively engaging in a week long celebration of “Sex Week” complete with a “Slut-Pride seminar”, now, does that sound like ‘slut’ was an issue for the left… or a godsend?

If you did get my point, then you should realize that the point was NOT that the left are being hypocrites, but that they purposefully make outlandish statements and accusations, not because they truly have any basis in fact for them, or to convey meaningful information to you, but in order to suck more power from you, through your responses to them.

My point was that they make their attention getting accusations, and this applies equally to last weeks “War on Women!” or this weeks “White Hispanic racial profiling stalking and murder of hoodie wearing people... or blacks”, as well as to whatever the heck news next week brings, while fully expecting to be able to follow up on your responses to them with even more heated, self-righteously offended reactions, reactions which have, and could have, no heat without your principles to fuel them with.

Take a look at that headline again, who was offended and who was on the offense?

It was conservative sensibilities that they were playing to, only conservatives would actually be offended over the word ‘slut’, clearly the use of the word itself could not have inflamed leftist sensibilities – again, see the article above, leftists revel in vulgarity, their cultural signature is that of pursuing the vulgar, flaunting a coarsening of standards ‘pushing the envelope’ or 'defining deviancy downwards' (see the ‘Reason fest’ for evidence ). The Proregressive Left’s huffiness is powered across the media through statements that are spun to magnify conflict with conservatives sense of right and wrong - though the sanctimony is all theirs.

The power of the Left's accusations, comes from the Right's reactions to them, as is made clear in  Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals - and pay special note to the word 'enemy' - that's you:

: …the fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.

More importantly, my point was that they do not make their accusations in order to win an argument they never actually made (claims and assertions are not arguments), but instead they are made to lure you into answering their charges, and in so doing they succeed in getting you to abandon the only solid ground you had to stand upon to begin with, that of principle. Here, let me let Alinsky make my point for me, Alinsky

“The job of the organizer is to maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a “dangerous enemy.” — P.100”

Alinsky wasn’t some brilliant innovative thinker, he just had a talent for recognizing what the meaning of the ideas the proregressive left espoused must mean when put into practice, and the actions that would be needed to do so. They are nothing new, he just reformulated what had been practiced a few decades before, and without the German accent.

More than one way to skin a Con….
One way to win an argument you cannot win by strength of argument, is through shifting the argument to another argument, without your opponents realizing it, which is not as difficult as it sounds, it simply means running the old Quality to Quantity switcheroo. When you begin an argument over whether Healthcare should be provided by Govt, and the leftist replies that

“30% of Americans are not covered by healthcare, what about them! Are they just out of luck?! Would you leave them to die on the sidewalk?!”

, they just shifted the original argument - that providing Healthcare is not a proper function of Govt - to what you would do about large numbers of people who are dropping dead of being uninsured – they just shifted your argument, to their argument, which is an entirely different one, they shifted it from the One Principle to the many particulars, Quality to Quantity, Concepts to Percepts, High to Low, it is the sure fire method for transforming Steak to Beef Jerky, and it easily transforms your concern for ‘doing the Right thing’, into useful sympathies for the quantities of people in peril… and why?

The ‘Why’ is critical here. It’s Not because it will help those quantities of people gasping on the sidewalk, not because it will further the cause of liberty and individual rights, not to help you to understand them, most definitely not because it is a better argument, and not even in order to win the argument. No, the purpose is to move YOU from the positions of standing on principle, to their position of standing on an intellectual dinghy, a lifeboat, separated from all long range ideas, principles and truths, leaving you bobbing there, in the moment where urgency and crisis rule, with your attention and sympathies focused upon the sympathetic image of ‘30% of Americans being without healthcare’, which of course means any moment they could have their lives destroyed by medical bills – the purpose is to move you away from the solid ground of integrated Principles, where they know full well that you are unassailable.

This works fine in a one on one debate… but when you want to win something more than the argument of the moment, when you need to battle a whole people who habitually look beyond the moment… you’ve to go that a step further, after all, you can easily step back onto solid ground… right? When the argument is over, you could easily shake your head, and go back to your principled position… right?

The way to destroy your ability to go back, is also the best way to ‘win’ (and by win I mean sabotage) an argument that cannot be won by strength of argument, is to combine the ‘Quality to Quantity’ method with another, destroying the ground under your feet, destroying their opponents (you) ability to make their own argument. That’s done by introducing an arbitrary issue, usually either an asserted standard of ‘fairness’, or something that’s urgent!, into your argument (‘Contraceptive rights’ and ‘woman’s health requirements’ are prime examples of this), which if accepted, you not only find that you must respond to it, but must think of it as if it had meaning, IT becomes the standard which the rest of your argument must justify itself by, and like introducing a nest of termites to the timbers of a home’s foundation, your work there is done, the timbers crumble, the foundation cracks, and your principles come tumbling down.

Look at the ‘development’ of the GOP over the last century. With each accommodation it has made to the themes of the proregressive left, the Taxation, Prohibition, labor law, Social Security, it has slid from the party which won the Civil War, which insisted on Civil Rights, pushed through Constitutional Amendments to secure those Rights for all Americans (13th, 14th, 15th), the party which opposed the President who introduced official segregation into the Army – Democrat Woodrow Wilson – and has slid down into the party (though it still thinks of itself as believing the same things) which is snidely, without effort or question, spoken of, mocked, derided as, being opposed to minorities, the middle class and civil rights.

That is how it works. Read Saul Alinsky, he’ll show you in detail how to make it work. Why does it work?

Termite Taunts
As Aristotle pointed out almost 3,000 years ago, you cannot respond to fallacies as if they were legitimate arguments, they are “that which does not follow”, they are examples of dis-meaning, and if you don’t identify what is meaningful and discard what isn’t, the weeds will take root in your thoughts,

Book Vii, Part 17
""The object of the inquiry is most easily overlooked where one term is not expressly predicated of another…, because we do not distinguish and do not say definitely that certain elements make up a certain whole. But we must articulate our meaning before we begin to inquire; if not, the inquiry is on the border-line between being a search for something and a search for nothing. Since we must have the existence of the thing as something given, clearly the question is why the matter is some definite thing; e.g. why are these materials a house? Because that which was the essence of a house is present…."

Aristotle identified all the fundamentals, that the purpose of considering anything, is to judge its soundness and value, and that value has value by having a credible connection to reality, by being true. You identify what the nature and purpose of a house is, and then you determine what belongs in it by how they support the purpose of the house – or not – if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t belong. The purpose of logic is to ensure that what you’ve said is in that full measure, reliable; not just in what you said, but in the premises which support your saying it. In honest attempts at reasoning, fallacies are made through honest error - even outlandish ones. For instance, it's conceivable that someone could, after noticing that you have a garage, and a shower in your hall, propose installing a car wash in your hall as well -

'well, since people need showers 'cause they like to be clean, and they own cars, it'd be convenient to clean their cars after taking a shower...'

, but even the densest dunderhead would be able to see that while showers have some similarity in purpose and plumbing, the purpose of a home and the needs of typical homeowners would be at odds with an indoor car wash, both sides could eventually reason their way to an understanding as the faulty reasoning is identified, exposed and discarded because of the desire on both parties to respect and reflect reality.

The arbitrary assertion has no such connection, it isn’t even wrong… it is just there, like an elephant in a dining room… it doesn’t belong, it has no place there, it doesn’t enhance the room or its purpose and it isn’t made to enhance the purpose of the house, but to destroy it – there is no possibility of making a convincing argument against it, it wasn’t made to convince you in the first place. When an assertion is made which has no reason for being other than to inflame and corrupt, the only proper response is to dismiss it, with silence or laughter (see post #2), while returning the discussion to the fundamental nature of the discussion, leaving the burden of them for making a logical case for it – which they cannot do – a logical case, a connection to reality – never existed even in their minds.

Put the burden on them, and you will win, but if you answer the arbitrary charge directly, you will join them in their flight from reality. Bon Voyage!

Yet, in time honored Conservative tradition, we take the bait, abandon our ground, and fall flat on our faces at their feet. As I said in part 1:

“A word of advice to all when trying to understand how to respond to the left - don’t bother looking for the answers where the left isn’t concerned with your finding them - IOW what they are saying, and the implications of what they are saying - no matter how outrageous or hypocritical, or even on occasion, sensible, they may seem - it is all safe ground for them, and they know it; it is after all the position they've prepared for you, and if you take the bait and engage them on it - you lose.”

We must realize that proregressive leftists are not making their statements and ‘arguments’ because they believe what they are saying has any real relation to the truth, but only because they see it as a way of ‘making things work’ to further their positions and weaken your ability to rely upon principle.

They are not trying to help you to understand their ideas - they have goals, not ideas – they assert their positions in order to further their ends, not by way of arguments, which their misosophy (via hyper pragmatism) makes them ill-equipped to construct, but through your over generous willingness to believe that they did have one to begin with.

The left has no arguments or even any real intention of arguing with you (as Monty Python pointed out, Contradictions, Assertions and Insults are not Arguments… that’s down the corridor (and too the right, no doubt)), the Proregressive Left cannot make true arguments because they are entirely focused upon the pragmatic ideal, as Dewey said

“There is no absolute and unchanging truth, but rather, truth is what works””

, or more truthfully put:’ “What works at the moment, is what is ‘true’ enough”’, and with such thoughts they sever themselves from reality and the only means man has of discovering and living within it – principles. The Pragmatic ideal is to take action, don’t deliberate, there’s no overriding truth to be sought or found, just try something, anything!, just take action. Not surprisingly, that goes exceedingly well with even more of Saul Alinsky’s advice:

“The fifth rules of the ethics of means and ends is that concern with ethics increases with the number of means available and vice versa. To the man of action the first criterion in determining which means to employ is to assess what means are available. Reviewing and selecting available means is done on a straight utilitarian basis — will it work? Moral questions may enter when one chooses among equally effective alternate means. — P.32”

Keep in mind, the leftist will appeal to high-minded values, brazenly so, in fact that is how they attract the youth as they do, they sound so enticingly idealistic, Alinsky pg 32,

"The organizer, the revolutionist, the activist or call him what you will, who is committed to a free and open society is in that commitment anchored to a complex of high values. These values include the basic morals of all organized religions; their base is the preciousness of human life."

They know the power and importance of principles, and they desperately seek the appearances of valuing them, that is the heart of propaganda, but they do so in only the shallowest of ‘photo-op’ instances (Spike Lee promoting ‘Hoodie’ solidarity for Trayvon… from a Nick’s game - sans the hoodie); they do not and cannot practice the ideals they mouth, the first probe for principle ("So Mr. Lee, what is the connection between jobbing apparel and Justice?") will scratch the surface and expose that nothing is there but their own gaping void. For the proregressive leftist the Ends do justify their means, even when they try to moderate them, they do so only to pursue them more efficiently, as Alinsky points out:

"Democracy is not an end; it is the best political means available toward the achievement of these values.
Means and ends are so qualitatively interrelated that the true question has never been the proverbial one, "Does the End justify the Means?" but always has been "Does this particular end justify this particular means?"

Luring you in with the sizzle of steak, while never intending to feed you anything other than a pack of beef jerky instead. Review the last two posts if you miss my point, but it should be clear by now that the left is only interested in using Reason as a tool, a weapon for winning arguments, and accordingly they consider logical fallacies not as errors and flaws, but as useful tactics which will ‘work for the moment’ in swaying opinion in their favor, which is as close to ‘truth’ as they are interested or care to come.

Or to put it ironically: They are opposed to principle, on principle.

So who is Esau and what was his pottage?

It's forgivable to not recall what 'pottage' was, a thick red (very appropriate) stew, but if you don’t remember Esau, you can thank your proregressive education for that. Such stories were eliminated from our educational systems long ago, and respectable discussion of them soon after; I don’t want to shock you too much, but, brace yourself, it’s from (whispers:)The Bible (gasp!), Esau’s Pottage is a very brief passage about two brothers, twins in fact, Jacob and Esau. Esau was the older brother, a hard worker, kind of gruff, who was not all that concerned with impractical things, Jacob knew Esau pretty well, and he knew that when Esau wanted something, he wanted it right then, he wanted satisfaction, then and there, and would value that satisfaction above and beyond any future concerns.

Genesis 25:24-35
24 So when her days were fulfilled for her to give birth, indeed there were twins in her womb. 25 And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over; so they called his name Esau.[a] 26 Afterward his brother came out, and his hand took hold of Esau’s heel; so his name was called Jacob.[b] Isaac was sixty years old when she bore them.
27 So the boys grew. And Esau was a skillful hunter, a man of the field; but Jacob was a mild man, dwelling in tents. 28 And Isaac loved Esau because he ate of his game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.
Esau Sells His Birthright
29 Now Jacob cooked a stew; and Esau came in from the field, and he was weary. 30 And Esau said to Jacob, “Please feed me with that same red stew, for I am weary.” Therefore his name was called Edom.[c]
31 But Jacob said, “Sell me your birthright as of this day.”
32 And Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so what is this birthright to me?”
33 Then Jacob said, “Swear to me as of this day.”
So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 And Jacob gave Esau bread and stew of lentils; then he ate and drank, arose, and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright.

We don’t have the luxury of having a Jacob, as a direct result of our educational system we’re all Esau’s today, but if you don’t want to end up in a well, or sold to a slave driver (read the rest of the story yourself), there are certain things we need to remember. You cannot lose sight of the fact that your reliance upon principles unbound by time, is the anti-thesis to their pragmatic positions made for the moment - you are their enemy and they sense it, and like Esau, they too have a hunger which they must satisfy, but they can only do so by passing some of their own hunger off on to you (ever wonder why zombies are so popular lately?), which they do through moving your focus from planning for the long term, to satisfying the urgent needs of the moment. All else is done or made to serve that, no matter what long term consequences that may cause, or cause them to lose out on – as their patron saint of mis-economics, Lord Keynes said about the long run,

“In the end, we're all dead."

The left by nature chooses Quantity over Quality. The question for the Alinsky generation, isn’t "Is stealing wrong, or right?", it is whether or not it seems as if the particular ‘good’ which they can imagine doing with someone else’s money, ‘justifies’ their stealing it, with ‘justify’ here meaning little more than what Marshal McLuhan and Andy Warhol meant as the new definition of Art:

‘“Art is what you can get away with”

, which is an excellent, real life example, of how the principles which one does, or doesn't hold, truly do surface in your approach to both Art and Justice - a principle the left vociferously denies... yet practices daily.

The proregressive leftist will exuberantly trade away the Right of individuals to live their own life, for gaining attractive privileges in a life that another must provide for them. The Proregressive Leftist’s marketing plan for Utopia is that of getting what you want, when you want it, without fear of consequences – what works for the moment – without fear of an unpleasant consequence in tow.

But the reality is that when you abandon Reason and embrace chaos, you are choosing to eliminate your ability to choose. You cannot embrace, shake hands with or be polite to leftist positions (I’m talking about the positions, mind you, not the people) and expect to be able to hold onto your own principles, or what they provide – a path for pursuing happiness –‘they’ cannot allow it.

When I say ‘They’, I don’t mean a collective of people, but the nature of the ideas which collectivists ascribe to, the philosophy of the left. Even if not consciously, the sensibilities built upon them will shudder at the suggestion that there are universal truths in anything, it’s a slap in the face to the entire leftist program of lifeboat ethics, the foundation of which is urgently doing what seems to work at the moment, because after all, the moment is all there is. Lifeboat Ethics is a favorite tool of college professors for disarming and destroying the morals of new students with something along the lines of :

"You have five people and a lifeboat in shark infested waters that can hold only 4 people, who will you push out?"

, they shift the argument from Ethics, to a situation which urgently requires immediate expedient action and where extended reasoning and debate is not possible – a situation antithetical to ethical consideration and thought, is used to undermine whatever ethics that students might have managed to make it to college with.

Conservatives, need to realize that no matter how much they do to ‘accommodate’ the left and gain favor and popularity with them, or even attempting to win favor through debating them, they never can or will. Conservative positions will always be perceived as a threat, and for at least two reasons.

• First, your principles are a reminder that there are consequences for all that we do, which is an affront to everything they want, and everything they want to believe.
• Secondly, your claim to such principles and rights, are barriers which are keeping them from what they want, in just the same way that the Constitution is a barrier to the power to ‘provide’ the universal healthcare they so dearly want.

But enticing you to yield the power of your principles to them, bit by bit, has shown itself to be a means to their getting the power to get what they want, whenever they want it, and so they will do what they need to do to get that power, the power of your principles and rights, away from you. Which is why they will forever gleefully taunt conservatives with promises of niceness, as Lucy does with holding the football for Charlie Brown.

They will wine you and dine you, celebrate your ‘good guy’ness – ‘Maverick’ John McCain come to mind – while focusing your attention upon the moment with them, urging conservatives to see the urgency and need to deal with a situation, “Choose to be your own man”, they’ll say, “Work with us, be reasonable, be pragmatic, just this one time” they'll say – supporting your choice to choose as they’ve chosen for you,

• thwarting Bush,
• furthering Campaign finance reform or
• saving healthcare!

As long as you advance their positions they’ll happily feed you their approval and their access to popularity, and as the conservative takes their eyes off of looking at the world through a principled perspective, they will be cajoled into making a bargain with them, trading their favors for ‘modifying’ your principles in thanks, or in anticipation of the approval which popularity starved conservatives will hungrily eat up, just as Esau ate his pottage, in exchange for their birthright and yours – your principles and your rights, without which, no lesson can be learned.

As the left implicitly understands (and which the rest of us once knew), taking your attention off of what is the highest good, and focusing it upon the immediate and urgent desire you hunger for, is the best way to separate you from your Rights and from your ability to recognize what is true. The more mileage that can be put between you and your principles, the more easily you can be led. The nature of temptation is that you don't gain power over people through forcing their compliance, but from their being tempted into following your wishes... and helping them to 'forget' that choosing ‘just this one time’ means for all time – that to corrupt a principle is to cripple it, and to abandon a principle 'for a time', is to abandon your grip upon the eternal truths in exchange for a satisfying morsel... for the moment. But since it took over a century of corrupting the educational system to rid it of such lessons for most of us, they’re not about to enlighten you on that score.

Once upon a time in America, a good professor could take a passage like that of Esau’s pottage, and spend the entire day, if not the week, drawing lessons out from it, lessons that would Enlighten their students understanding of how best to live, which, once upon a time, was what teachers taught in order to Educate their students – it was Why they were Teachers, and why parents sent their children to be their students. But that was back when an Education was understood as, not a means of training you in skills to earn a living, but as something which made you better at living, something which made you capable of being a moral, self-governing individual and fit for living in liberty with their fellow man. Back then they understood that a side benefit of a good education was that it enabled a person to earn a living in any field they chose… now… it fits you only with the skills useful… for the moment.

A Slap out of Left field - Just For You
So, now, after all of this, as the deeper slap to the face, I'd like to offer to you, in addition to the political argument, and the threat to your Individual Rights that you and, or, your fellows are selling out for gain, I'd like to point out that they are not the real issue here; it isn't even the rhetorical ability to make an argument that has me fit to be tied. It is your willingness to focus upon this circus in Washington D.C. that is centered around healthcare and the legal standing of all of our individual rights - important stuff, no doubt - but the real issue, the point upon which American has been ushered up to the edge of the abyss, is that you, and it is very likely that I do mean you, have quietly allowed your children's education to be sold for pottage, an 'annoyance' to be conveniently offloaded to govt functionaries to handle so that more urgent hungers of your own could be satisfied, but... tell me... what do you suppose your children are being fed by these people who are employed by (directly or indirectly), and beholden to, the people who are writing 2,000 page bills that no one does or can read?

Hmmm?

Do you think that they are being taught the importance of reading and reasoning? So that they can be fit to fight for, defend and live in liberty?

Have another bowl on me, brother.

Today, lacking such lessons, our students are ‘feducated’ into becoming good workers who scoff at impractical ideas of Right and Wrong, and we thoughtlessly trade away the birthrights of our children to satisfy our urgent need for some pottage.

Or maybe even for some contraception... eh? Yummy.

Obama Scores a Hat Trick Against Liberty, pt 1.

I spent most of last week with a head full of cold medicine, the hacking and wheezing made all the worse from watching as the Obama Administration scored its 'contraceptive' Hat Trick upon us. And after having watched the Keystone Cops (for those readers who have never seen the old silent comedies… just think of our current Eric Holder Justice Dept - same difference) level of responses to it on the part of the Right, and the Left, I find myself longing for more of that ol' foggy medicine headed feeling.

The Right has been busily dishing out headlines screaming about a new war on Religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, and right on cue, The Left has followed that up by screaming about the Right's 'War on Women's health', perfectly illustrated by one left leaning friend of mine who linked to an article trumpeting how conservatives had rolled the clock back to the 1950’s. During all of this, while taking it all in and checking his schedule, Obama shook his teleprompter at the nation and chided people about the dangers of going overboard, and then, being the swell fellow he is, he offered to go ahead and generously offer an exemption to the church, out of the goodness of his heart, in order to make everything all better.

Isn’t that special? NyQuil please. And Sudafed too… oh to heck with the middlemen, I’ve got enough Kleenex stocked up...” Scotch!”

Obama’s Hat Trick.

1st Amendment:“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

President Obama’s Hat trick involves his successfully pitting the popular myths of one part of the 1st amdt, against the popular appearances of another part of the 1st amdt, while thoroughly undermining the actual foundation which all of the amendments, meaning your rights, rest upon (you look surprised... did you actually believe that your Rights start with the 1st Amendment?). Here’s his new chief of staff, Mr. Lew, giving us a glimpse of their patented 'Rights Reducing' technique in action, from last week on Fox News Sunday:

WALLACE:…The question -- where does the president get the power to tell a private company they have to offer a product and offer it for free?
LEW: Well, Chris, just to be clear -- the president has the authority under the Affordable Care Act to have these kinds of rules take affect. And the issue with this being for free is quite an interesting one. If you look at the cost of providing health insurance, it actually doesn't cost more to provide a plan with contraceptive coverage than it does without.

That is quite an amazing statement by Mr. Lew, but before getting into my reply, which I’m fairly certain will in some way unsettle all of my friends, left, right and center, let me give you a hint as to my take on this:

Religious freedom has not been attacked, liberty itself has been attacked, and it’s being attacked under the cover of the distraction of ‘religious freedom being under attack’.

But before digging in, let’s recap and dispense with some of the popular distractions first, I'll take it in order, going from left to right.

Left Behind
To hear the left describe it, this last week, President Obama came out with some bold proposals for ‘women’s health issues’, which have simply been misinterpreted as being offensive to Catholics and sooo unfairly too, since it was really all actually about the all-important topic of 'Contraceptive Health'. And that has been the meme of the week, hasn't it?… it’s all about women’s health, contraceptive care, etc, as White House Press Secretary Jay Carney emphasized:

This needs to be said, over and over, to put the discussion about contraception to rest, to place it back in the realm of public health, and to stop the stigmatization of all reproductive health care, which has not surprisingly gone well beyond abortion to include contraception.
And of course there’s that ‘Turning the clock back’ meme which my friend was promoting, “Very neatly, and on three separate fronts, conservatives in America turned the clock back to the 1950s with their rhetoric about women’s rights Thursday, according to women in politics on both sides of the aisle. This could be a big problem for the GOP when the calendar reaches November...”

IMHO, this has been less a case of the clock being turned back by conservatives, than it has been an example of what this administration does best: campaigning.

This ploy, begun months ago, looks to have been designed to take the media focus off of the dismal state of the economy and the President’s fumbling of it, such as with the Keystone Pipeline, etc, and putting it squarely back onto the easily accessible fears of the unfocused and unwary voter (IOW those who vote Leftist (yeah, rhetoric, so sue me)) and raising for each of them the very scary possibility of a Republican being elected president, which of course as everyone knows, means an impending Theocracy!


Silly as that sounds (you’re… not silly enough to think it doesn’t sound silly, are you?), I’d like you to think back, way back... when was the first instance in your recent memory, and I'm sure you could go back months, if not years, in searching your memory banks, when was it that you last recall the issue of contraception being publicly raised, let alone threatened? I don’t mean abortion, so spare me your links and articles, please, and I don’t even mean condoms being distributed in schools, I mean contraception being threatened with elimination or regulation through either a high profile legal case, or as the central focus of some piece of legislation or even as a vital component of your health care plan. Hmmm?
Anything? Anyone?

Have you heard about anyone seeking to outlaw or to prevent the production or sale of contraception? Have you seen the black helicopters swarming around your local pharmacy or convenience store and emptying the shelves of such things?

I’m thinking… probably... no.

And as far as health care goes, maybe it’s just me, but when I’ve heard people discussing their health care plans over the years, I don’t believe that I’ve ever heard them asking about whether or not an HMO or a PPO included the all-important bargain pricing on contraceptives… how about you? And please, no 'You're a Man! You don't Know!' complaints, they don't apply, I'm not talking about me - I don't think I've ever heard men discussing their health care plans, it's always been either the women I work with, or my wife or her friends, so how about it?

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Yet now we’re supposed to be suddenly faced with this oh-so urgent issue of contraceptive health in the public discourse,and it’s so vitally important an issue now that the President must step in and make a special ‘exemption’ to still the waters and put things to rights.

Really? Where did this come from? Where did it start?

It's my bet that the first time in recent memory that you likely heard the issue of contraception being raised at all, was during George Stephanopoulos’s bizarre and extended discussion of ‘contraceptive care’ at one of the republican debates, do you remember watching or hearing about that? It was so out of the blue and inexplicable... everyone I knew, and most of the pundits as well, were doing a serious head scratch over it... 'where'd that come from?'

I’m glad to see, now that I google it, that I’m hardly the first or only one to wonder that, or to be suspicious about it:

“… most everyone agrees that the moment where Stephanopoulos suddenly shifted the topic from job creation to hypothetical questions involving whether the states have a right to ban contraception was…odd (to say the least).

Yep. This was in the New Hampshire debate, January 7th, which the Daily Caller notes caused "... an impatient audience literally “boo” co-moderator George Stephanopoulos for a series of unrelenting questions to Mitt Romney about a hypothetical ban on contraceptives...". Here's part of it,

“Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?” Stephanopoulos asked the slightly bewildered-looking former Massachusetts governor.
“George, this is an unusual topic that you’re raising,” Romney responded, “Do states have a right to ban contraception? I can’t imagine a state banning contraception. I can’t imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so…Given that there’s no state that wants to do so, and I don’t know of any candidate that wants to do so, you’re asking could it constitutionally be done? We could ask our Constitutionalist here,” Romney said, gesturing toward Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX).
Stephanopoulos persisted.
“Do you believe states have that right or not?” he asked Romney.
“George, I don’t know if the state has a right to ban contraception, no state wants to! The idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do, that no state wants to do, and then asking me whether they can do it or not is kind of a silly thing,” Romney responded, much to the crowd’s delight.”

It continued on from there for several minutes… and you 've got to ask, why? What in the past, let alone the recent past, prompted bringing that issue up? Answer: Nothing.

Stephy’s questioning only becomes even slightly sensible, if Stephy had foreknowledge of the upcoming HHS‘contraceptive health’ issue, and given George 'Stephy' Stephenopolous’s history with leading public opinion to benefit this administration (surely you haven't forgotten about JournoList and MMFA, have you?), that is hardly an issue that needs any sort of conspiracy theory to float it, it’s just the way he is used to operating. Especially, given recent events, it seems very likely that it came about as a result of Stephy's political insider trading which revealed to him that the matter of contraception soon would be an issue, and it was his hope to be able to conduct a pre-emptive strike on the GOP candidates and catch one or more of them with their pants down - so to speak.

And now surprise, surprise, here comes the HHS rule mandating that contraception will be provided, even if for free, no matter what. Suddenly the issue in the news is not about the economy, it’s not about the Keystone Pipeline, it’s not about questionable foreign policy positions around the world, or even about the fact that these HHS’s directives are examples of the govt forcibly abridging the rights of its people, no, no, no… it's all about 'contraceptive health' and the eeevil conservatives who desire nothing more than the opportunity to go on oppressing women.

And for their part, conservatives have been more than happy to play along.

Fools. Why? Let me ask you something, if you saw someone shooting at people, and then shooting at clergy, would you object to their shooting at the clergy? Or would you object to the caliber of gun they were using to shoot at the clergy... or would you object to the fact that they were shooting at People!? Hmmm? That'll have to do until next post, but... think about it... mmmkay?

The issue was doubled down on when the White House tried to ‘help’ by having President Obama ‘offer’ his generous exemption to Catholics; out of the goodness of his heart, he’s offered to force insurance companies to extend those same services to the same people in the same organization… but (supposedly) now they'll be 'offering' them for free.
What was the explanation for that? President Obama said:

"Every woman should be in control of the decisions that affect her own health," Obama said in a midday address at the White House.

"Now, as we move to implement this rule, however, we've been mindful that there's another principle at stake here -- and that's the principle of religious liberty, an inalienable right that is enshrined in our Constitution," Obama said. "As a citizen and as a Christian, I cherish this right."

So President Obama, mindful of those deeply cherished Rights (remember the 'Magician rule': Don't let your eyes follow where he directs your attention), and the left's deeply coveted privileges, or as HuffPo puts it:

Religious groups, particularly Catholics, fiercely objected, saying the federal government should not force institutions to violate the tenets of their faith. Women's advocates argued that employees should have access to birth control regardless of where they work.

, what was our constitutional professor's proposal to defuse this 'conflict of rights'?

Under the new plan, a religiously affiliated institution would not be required to provide contraception coverage. Rather, the institution's insurance company would offer the coverage for free and without raising premiums.

Now, even if you take his 'solution' as an actual attempt to offer something new (which is highly doubtful, I think Rep. Ryan had it right as "A distinction without a difference"), what it comes down to is that before the 'compromise', his administration proposed to mandate that religious organizations must provide 'contraceptive care' to their employees in their health insurance, and after his exemption... religious organizations must provide 'contraceptive care' to their employees in their health insurance, but... the insurance companies must pay for it.

President Obama Revamps Birth Control Policy: MyFoxDC.com

That 'solution' was supposed to make everything all right? That these contraceptive items are being ‘offered’, mandatorily, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?, riiight, I mean, obviously, when it comes to issues of religious principle, the price of the materials involved have traditionally been the most important factor, right? "Free" fixes everything, right? Clearly, if contraception, or even abortion, were offered for free, Catholics and conservatives would have no more problem with the issue, right?

Could anyone, anyone, really think that offering to offer other people’s money to pay for the services they deeply objected to, would actually soothe anybody’s objections?

Can anyone really think that the White House was deluded enough to think that their actions would somehow not be seen as inflammatory to the right? On the other hand, there was one group was pleased:

"Sister Carol Keehan, head of the Catholic Health Association, an umbrella group for more than 600 Catholic hospitals, said Friday she was "very pleased" with Obama's compromise, which she said "protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.

Keehan was a key supporter of the president's health care reform law -- against the wishes of the U.S. Catholic bishops -- but she had voiced strong criticism of the initial contraception regulations."

Big surprise there, right? 

"But... but... but..." you and President Obama attempt to say, "... she's Catholic! See! It's NOT a religious issue!", which I do agree with, or at least I agree that it's not primarily a religious issue... but I'll leave that for the next post, because for now the fact of the matter is that it has been taken as a religious issue by the Right, and by the left, which is exactly what the administration was hoping for to begin with.

It's also no surprise that people are now fired up along the preferred leftist battle lines of sex and diminished rights (‘women’s rights’, ‘religious rights’, etc), and that the media is obligingly painting conservatives into the corner of “the 1950’s”, not to mention the added benefit of there being very few still questioning the administration’s handling of the economy.

Imagine that.

And conservatives are the ones who are supposed to have turned the clock back? Please. Can you say 'Manipulation'? Ladies and Gents, the movers and shakers of the left knew what they were doing, they correctly gauged the reactions of the right, and the left, and chose this issue, and this timing, as not only a useful media meme to control the news cycle, but an effective campaign strategy as well - time will tell whether or not they misjudged - but I don't think that there's any doubt that this entire issue was raised with the Presidential campaign in mind.

And heads up to the Left - this campaign is a campaign against the American understanding of Liberty, and if you win it, you will lose a treasure you never realized you had.

As a final note until my next post, let me offer a clue to my Catholic and other religious friends – if you are thinking that you are going to battle this mandate and this ‘exemption’, without first undoing your support for everything that made it possible - ala Sister Carol Keehan:

"An ideal health care system would first of all provide everybody with high quality care. It would reach out to everyone, it would focus on preventive care, and it would give special attention to the vulnerable."

, and the Catholic Bishops:

"Since 1919, the United States Catholic bishops have supported decent health care for all and government and private action to advance this essential goal,” Bishop Blaire said.“Long before the current battles, the Catholic Church was persistently and consistently advocating for this overdue national priority."

, who supported ObamaoCare to begin with; for them to have a chance in hell to undo this or any of the rest of it will require a miracle to succeed.

Arbitrary Disasters - The Health of Justice in the Age of Obama

Arbitrary Disasters
I spent the other day in Missouri's capital, Jefferson City, sitting in the Senate gallery and biting my tongue while listening to a number of Senators burn the clock and showboat to each other while trying to draw out the opposing Senator into making a slip of the lip that they could politically exploit.

Not particularly noteworthy in and of itself.

The bill being debated, SJR25, proposed by Sen. Jane Cunningham, which is noteworthy, would pose some significant hurdles for ObamaCare, and so it's not too surprising that the Democrat senators would oppose it, however, why they oppose it, and on what grounds they oppose it, goes to the root of not only what is wrong in politics, but of all that is wrong in the world today.

The bill is for an amendment to be submitted to the people to vote on amending Missouri's state constitution, so that,

"Upon voter approval, this constitutional amendment provides that no federal law shall compel a patient, employer, or health care provider to participate in any government or privately run health care system, nor prohibit a patient or employer from paying directly for legal health care services."

While their opposition in itself is not all that newsworthy, there's more in the senators arguments and opposition to the bill, that is revealing about their beliefs, and that of the left in general.

Sen. Days aggressively and obnoxiously tried to taunt Sen. Cunningham into making a slip of the lip and admit that the right secretly wants the poor and minorities to writhe in the streets for lack of healthcare and for their babies to die of hunger in gutters, and so forth. What really seemed to get Sen. Days, and her fellow democrats, incensed, was Sen. Cunningham admitting that she thought people should be allowed to make their own choices, that she sought to,

...protect the right of Missourians to make a choice regarding their healthcare without fear of penalty"

- which apparently to these democrat senators minds, is just not to be allowed - and that is horrifying. This was the core of what they attacked and they spent the entire day and night either challenging Sen. Cunningham to admit that it meant that she hated the poor and minorities, or in mock inquiry to each other, over how amazed they were that the Right could be so heartless as to think people should be able to make their own choices - the entire ten or twelve hours of their jabber and pathetic amendment attempts can be boiled down to these comments:

Sen. Bray: "A sick person is not free! If you can choose to take away their healthcare then I don't know what freedom means anymore!"
Sen. Justus: "If you can't afford something you have no freedom. and All children under the age 18 should be cared for by the state!"
Sen. Days: "What option do people have who don't have health insurance!? That's not freedom! I want the freedom to purchase whatever I want to choose! Having to pay for healthcare insurance, that is not *freedom*, that's oppression!"
Sen. Shoemyer"This is a freeloader amendment, I'm opposed to freeloading, all rural healthcare should be funded by the govt to give them all they might ever need."
Sen. Green: "What is the use of so called 'Sovereignty', didn't we deal with that in the Civil War?"

And last but not least worst,

Sen. Callahan: "The value of the constitution is that it can be changed... it's a living document... we need to call another constitutional convention so we can change it."

Now their 'arguments' are as easily refuted today, as they were when Frederich Bastiat refuted them in the mid 1800's, and in making these statements they display their ignorance of economics and for the very basis of our system of government in America, but they also display something much worse, something which makes them able to not only aggressively assert their ignorance and flagrantly disregard the fact that they are demonstrably wrong, but one also gets the distinct impression that they are proudly wrong (you see it in the smirks on their faces when the opposition exasperatedly demands 'how will you pay for this!?') - and that is the core of the matter which I want to get into with this post. To that I'd like to draw the attention of the Senators to a quote upon the wall of their chamber, which kept drawing my eyes as I listened to their 'debate', it is from Daniel O'Connell, a man, known as "The Liberator", who fought for freedom in 19th century Ireland, and reads in large golden letters hanging above their heads:

"Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong."

First though, lets go through the simple fly swatting task of refuting their assertions.

The Leftist Toolkit: Playing Cards and Fly Swatters
These 'arguments' buzzed about in #'s 1, 2, 3 and 4 by the superbly named Sen. Bray, the ironically named Sen. Justus, the should have been named Sen. Dazed and the self refuting Sen. Shoemyer, amount to minor variations on the old saw: "A hungry man is not free!"

This regurgitates the oldest play in the proregressive playbook, which rests on performing a rhetorical game of Three Card Monty. Three Card Monty is the street game where you are shown three cards which are then placed face down on a table, and you bet that you can keep your eye on the one you picked at the start; you select your card, the bet is placed, and as the dealer swirls them around with a high speed flourish, through some slight of hand he has changed out the card you'd selected for another. He stops moving the cards - you touch the card you thought you'd selected, and he flips it over to show it's another, and you lose your bet.

Instead of using cards, the leftist plays this game with familiar concepts such as Power, Freedom and Generosity, so that , whether due to either sloppy thinking or deliberate intent, they are flourished about in a swirl of rhetorical fallacies in such a way that the conceptual card you thought you'd selected turns out to be something else entirely - your vote is cast, the bill is passed, and you lose.

So here's a look at the main cards, and their common substitutes,

• The first of these conceptual playing cards, is to equivocate between Economic power, and Physical power - which is to deliberately confuse persuasion with pistols. Economic power in a Free Market depends upon the choices freely made between buyers and sellers to exchange one good or service for another, in contrast to Physical power, whose only offer is the 'choice' given to one party to comply at the threat of force, injury or even death for not complying.
• The second is to confuse what we mean by Freedom by equivocating between what is metaphysically given us in life, and which we have no choice about whatsoever, such as the earth, moon and stars - with the man made - that which men choose to create through combining metaphysically given materials, with their own intelligence and effort, in order to create materials that wouldn't exist except through the chosen efforts of men, such as plows, bread and guns to defend them with.
• The third card is to confuse Charitable Generosity with Physical Compulsion, through equivocating between what is freely given by you towards what you consider to be a worthy cause, with the action of forcibly taking some amount of your time, effort and wealth, in order to give some of it to a cause you are told is worthy (and the rest of it to political players in the form of cash and favors).

This slight of hand is accomplished through the technique of equivocation, the mechanics of which are to deliberately confuse two related terms, substituting one which appeals to the person you are talking with, with another one that would be less appealing to them, but because they think they are dealing with the first, they willingly go along with the implications of the second. Think of a street vendor selling you a gold Rolex watch, for $100, while giving you a cheap knock off in it's place. You wouldn't have given him $100 if you knew how cheap the watch which you are actually getting was, but because you think you are buying an expensive gold Rolex, you pay him the $100 for the cheap knockoff.

Equivocation, which is the most valuable and heavily used tool in the leftists toolkit, is the equivalent of performing an intellectual swindle via a game of conceptual Three Card Monty. Ok, so lets flip their cards and nip their arguments in their collective buds.

One of the oldest ploy of proregressives and socialists of every stripe, is that of "A hungry man is not free!", and it's implication that the state must take something from you, in order to satisfy the hungry man's hunger so he too can enjoy the basic human freedoms you do - after all, it's only fair. This is an assault upon the very heart of freedom - not only on your ability to choose your own actions, but by implying that your freedom to choose depends upon the government giving that freedom to you and your fellow man.

The core technique is to equivocate between the metaphysically given, and the man made. The metaphysically given is the reality that we find ourselves in and have no choice but to accept. The man made is what we as people choose to do in, and with, the reality we are given. Freedom is concerned only with what you can conceivably be said to have a choice about. You can have no conceivable ability to 'choose' whether or not gravity affects you, or whether or not the earth undergoes seasons, or whether or not your body requires food - these are metaphysically given facts of reality.

Freedom is exercised in considering whether or not you will choose walking off of a cliff or to be mindful of the trail?, whether or not you will choose to seek shelter and clothing, or perish from exposure to the elements?, whether or not you will choose to sit and starve or hunt for food? If you can't find the things you need lying about you, will you choose to do what is required by the facts of reality to create or acquire them?, or will you blame others for your troubles as a pretext for robbing them of what they've taken the trouble to create or acquire?

A hungry man may have no choice about whether he feels hunger, but he is no less able to choose his actions than you are, and indeed may have a bit more motivation than you typically do to put forth the effort to make his choices and actions productive. A hungry man is free to seek productive work or charitable giving - the only one who is not free in this old leftist trope is you, who are forced into supporting a govt program which may or may not succeed in feeding the hungry, and which may or may not succeed in feeding those who are deserving of your generosity (How'd they become hungry? Through a financial crash or a narcotic one? Charity may help the first, but may actually worsen the state of the second as they have less and less reason to regain control of their lives) but is considerably more likely to be successful in providing various favors and wealth to a selected few of the politically connected.

Generosity is the motivational theme here which is used to exact voters consent for these programs, and another key point of equivocation, seeking to blur the difference between what you might generously choose to give, with that which is forcibly 'contributed' from you for 'doing good'.

As free men, you have the freedom to be generous with the fruits of your labor, which Americans have demonstrated like no other civilization in all of history, when we see people struck by circumstance, it is a common reaction among us to offer them what aid we can. Through Church's and numerous private charities, Americans are famous for offering what aid they can to those in need, both at home and abroad. But such generosity - which rests upon your choice to be generous - is destroyed when it is forcibly taken from you, just as there is no generosity involved when a pickpocket steals your money even if he does so to give some of it to a person in need. What leftists attempt to do through a perversion of the force of The Law, is to take your money (which you may or may not be able to afford), and give it to who they think needs it (whether or not you agree they are worthy recipients), and tell you that you are being ungenerous for objecting and especially for not enabling them to take more from you.

Far from it being the case that 'a hungry man is not free', in fact it is you who are not free when you are prevented from choosing how you will respond to the facts you find in the world around you. A hungry man, or any other man, has the freedom to choose what actions he will take to satisfy his hunger and provide for his food and shelter, unless a government steps in to restrain him within a leftist gulag or buries his industry under thousands of pages of incomprehensible tax codes, healthcontrol laws and volumes of regulatory agency directives. Freedom itself is infringed upon when an otherwise free man is forced to request government permits, pay for business licenses, numerous additional permits and various govt approved materials, in order to be allowed to offer his services in everything from manual labor to operating a hotdog stand, to becoming a teacher. A free man would also not have to pay 20+% of what he earns from the sweat of his brow, to pay for others to rest more comfortably, or for Govt to 'provide for his retirement' - these are the very things which tend to rob a free man of his wealth and force him into a state of hunger.

It is the over regulated, taxed and unauthorized man who is not free!

Stating the obvious: Left is separate from Right
A few basics to start with regarding the chosen root causes of poverty, power, property, freedom and tyranny:

• Choosing to sit and do nothing is the default state of nature - poverty.
• Choosing to 'acquire' what you want from others by force, is the default state of savagery - Might is right.
• Choosing to protect what property a persons efforts have enabled them to acquire, is the chosen state of basic civilization - it is not a default, it always requires an active choice from the people within that civilization - Might is for Right.
• Choosing to create and respect laws which preserve a peoples inalienable rights, is the higher State first envisioned by Western Civilization, and perfected by our Founding Fathers in the United States of America - it is in no way a default, it always requires not only an active, but a moral choice, to participate in and sustain the benefits of liberty and freedom - Might, under Rule of Law, defends the Right
• Choosing to write and impose laws which strip people of the property which they have attained through the exercise of their inalienable rights, is the default choice of savages who've never learned the meaning of Western Civilization, who have never learned the proper role of Laws, and only slightly modifies the default choice of those who under the pretext of 'doing good' act to reduce our civilization to the savagery of power - Might, under the rule of men, makes right

The nugget at the heart of the leftist misrepresentation of how they view Power, Freedom and Generosity, is that in their view, one that is twisted 180* around from that of Americas founding - Freedom is something that is first created and bestowed upon us by society, Generosity is what the state forces you to 'contribute' and it is the responsibility of government to use its Power to force society to spread these freedoms around as it sees fit.

Society, in the view of the left, provides you with freedom, and determines what you are are and are not free to do, or as Rousseau, the father of fascism, described what the Legislator must do to the common man: "This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free".

In their view, it is only because society says so, that you don't have the freedom to kill, you don't have the freedom to rape, you don't have the freedom to take whatever you want, because society says so (for all their apparent differences, this is a view which Rousseau and Hobbes would agree with, and endorse).

The leftist holds the view that 'A hungry man is not free!' because in their view, you are only free to vote because it is society which decides whether or not it will give you the freedom to vote, and if society hasn't decided to give you the food, or healthcare that exists within that society, then you have been denied the freedom to have them... and if other people are able to choose to feed themselves or to pay for the healthcare society has denied to you, then some in that society have chosen to prevent society from giving you your fair share; and so because society controls freedom, that society has failed to fairly distribute those 'freedoms' to all those within society, and in such a society the freedom to 'choose' is oppression of the many by the few.

The number of equivocations, errors, falsehoods and outright lies contained in this convoluted 'reasoning' are too numerous to list, but you'll be better able to locate and swat them down if you remember to look for their equivocations on those key concepts of Power, Freedom and Generosity. How and why they do so, I hope to get to later in this post, or (seeing my page count so far) in the next.

The uncommon sense of our Founding Fathers
Far from it being Society which empowers individuals, society is made up of Individuals, it can have no powers or rights which do not find their source in them ("... deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."). Without jumping a couple posts ahead in this series, this, and other core principles from which the United States of America developed from, were enshrined in our Declaration of Independence, that individuals by their nature as men are, in Jefferson's wording "...endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness...", and it is those rights which individuals bring to society, and which it is the purpose of society to protect for them from all enemies, foreign and domestic ("...That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men..."). The support of your rights, are dependent upon a sound government and rule of law, but the success or failure of your individual pursuit of happiness, depends upon your choices, and having choices depends upon your having the ability to choose to act upon them without the threat of physical force (Not simply the consequences of competition and disagreement, but from the Force of thuggery from outside, or inside, the law), and with the freedom to succeed or, inseparable from that, to fail. The success of any one person or group of people, can not be guaranteed without taking the means of satisfying their wants, from those who have earned theirs - and that would negate everyones right to their own property - a principle which any society violates at its peril.

That society which does not recognize that all Individual Rights depend upon the security of their Property Rights, will soon lose all rights, as John Adams put it when considering what would happen to a society whose property laws were dropped,

"...Property is surely a right of mankind as really as liberty. Perhaps, at first, prejudice, habit, shame or fear, principle or religion, would restrain the poor from attacking the rich, and the idle from usurping on the industrious; but the time would not be long before courage and enterprise would come, and pretexts be invented by degrees, to countenance the majority in dividing all the property among them, or at least, in sharing it equally with its present possessors. Debts would be abolished first; taxes laid heavy on the rich, and not at all on the others; and at last a downright equal division of every thing be demanded, and voted. What would be the consequence of this? The idle, the vicious, the intemperate, would rush into the utmost extravagance of debauchery, sell and spend all their share, and then demand a new division of those who purchased from them. 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."
(Full volume online here)

If 'society' takes away that ability of its individuals to choose, to make their own choices, and to keep secure that property which is the productive benefit of their good choices, then that society is not free and it's people cannot be free, and if that is your ideal for society, then you are not pursuing freedom or happiness, but instead you are pursuing a measure of safety and pleasure purchased at the price of slavery and you will have given those you will have sold yourself to, the power to enslave all of those in your society, even if only a few will feel the lash - for the moment.

When any person can be denied their inalienable rights, then no one in that society can be said to have any rights, only those certain few favors bestowed upon them by their government - for the moment.

Freedom means the freedom to make your own choices, and the attempt to deny other citizens the freedom to make their own choices, is to use force to deny them their freedom.

The fact is that the reasons why you do not kill, rape and steal, is because you recognize that other people have a natural right to be secure in their persons, in their thoughts and in their property, just as you do, and in those societies that have developed beyond the rule of the club, they have done so only because, to one degree or another, their society recognizes this.

What it is that actually defines and separates Left from Right - is that if you believe in inalienable rights derived from your nature as man, you are on the Right (and that leaves enough latitude of interpretation to accomodate views as diverse as those of Madison from Hamilton), if, on the other hand, you feel rights are instead a creation of the society and government, you are on the left. No matter your apparent agreements, they are incidental at best, politically speaking - no matter your religious beliefs, economic stances, or party affiliations, This is what defines and separates Left from Right.

For those leftist Senators who might sniff at such quaint terms as 'Natural Rights' and 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' such as are expressed in the Declaration of Independence, as the left has done from Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson on down through to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, might want to take a glance at their own states constitution, very likely they are going to be similar to ours here in Missouri, which states:

"Section 2. That all constitutional government is intended to promote the general welfare of the people; that all persons have a natural right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the enjoyment of the gains of their own industry; that all persons are created equal and are entitled to equal rights and opportunity under the law; that to give security to these things is the principal office of government, and that when government does not confer this security, it fails in its chief design. "

Senator Callahan thought it was particularly important to point out that Sen. Days was black, and she agreed (yes, of course it should be irrelevant to any discussion of ideas - hence the leftists fascination with it), and so he thought she should be particularly concerned with any loss of freedom and mention of slavery... if that is so, then Sen. Days, why are you so intent on denying all of the people in our society the ability to make their own choices? Why are you so intent on denying people their freedom? Why do you want to compel them to do what you think they should do? Why do you wish to make the government the master of the American people? The difference between a people who are compelled to act against their wishes for the benefit of a favored few, and that of actual slavery, is a distinction which I for one don't think is worth measuring.

These 'Senators' might want to take Missouri's state motto of "Show Me" a bit more to heart, and have another glance at their state's constitution

"Section 1. That all political power is vested in and derived from the people; that all government of right originates from the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole."

That last part in particular, does not mean for the benefit of some few, whether rich or poor, but for the good of the whole, and that act which singles out any favored part to bestow favors and goods, is opposed to your own states constitution.

Senators. As if.

States, Laws and Constitutions

The later two 'arguments' voiced by Senators Green and Callahan, and chimed in on and agreed to by the other three, gets closer to the heart of what I ultimately want to deal with in this post. It's their clearly expressed contempt for 'State Sovereignty" (Sen. Green: "What is the use of so called 'Sovereignty', didn't we deal with that in the Civil War?") and for the constitution (Callahan: "The value of the constitution is that it can be changed... it's a living document... we need to call another constitutional convention so we can change it"), that was particularly breathtaking to me. That and their apparent lack of recognition for what such statements mean to the rule of law, the administration of justice, and of potentially loosing tyranny upon us all.

Sen. Green's comment shows a complete and total lack of comprehension for the American form of government - not surprising, since he has chosen to be in the democrat party and affirm its most leftist positions which are, in every fundamental aspect, Anti-American - and yes I did say that. America is a Nation created from a set of ideas such as those I've already linked to in this post, and if you oppose those ideas, then you are - by your choice - Anti-American.

That we live in the United States of America, you'd think would lend a certain sense of emphasis to the word 'State', and maybe it should prompt some interest and concern for its meaning - at least from a Senator representing it. But if such obviousness is invisible to the 'common sense' of the leftist mind, here's another useful bit of trivia from the Constitution of the State of Missouri, of which these rubes are Senators(!) of,

"Section 4. That Missouri is a free and independent state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States; that all proposed amendments to the Constitution of the United States qualifying or affecting the individual liberties of the people or which in any wise may impair the right of local self-government belonging to the people of this state, should be submitted to conventions of the people. "

Huh. Wow, bet he didn't see that one coming (blink.... stare... groan). Assuming the best case scenario, that these fools in senator's clothing, do know not only what the law is, but what the foundation of all of the laws of their state rests upon, "That Missouri is a free and independent state" in a word - Sovereign - and yet Sen. Green chooses to put his personal half baked whims and prejudices above not only the rule of law, but that which the rule of law rests upon in his states constitution, as well as the nations constituiton, then he must be doing this so that he can masquerade and strut about as a puffed up little tin horn tyrant drunk with the power to 'do good' to his fellow man.

And that's the best case scenario. A worse case scenario is that he never bothered to even read the constitution of the state within which he campaigned for, and won the trust of enough of the citizens in his district to elect him to represent them to - that would surpass pure reckless abuse of power and verge on criminal negligence, and it is just such a combination of ignorance and negligence that is leading us down the leftward path towards being ruled over by would be tyrants - tin horned or otherwise.

Here's another useful nugget, it being from the aforementioned Constitution of the United States,

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

IOW: We the People of these States that are united - not one giant and uniform state partitioned into districts with quaint names like "Missouri", but several states, united - and which united to establish this Constitution for thes several states. And that means that the people who are living in the separate states, each of which derives its just powers through the consent of the governed, ordained and established a Constitution under which they would unite to form one nation of united, though sovereign, states.

Why? Why do you suppose they did that?

Sen. Callahan demanded in a long pretense of discussion with Sen. Shoemyer, 'What is so important about sovereignity? We gave it up to form a nation because of things like Schay's Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion (Believe he got his dates a bit mixed up there, the Whiskey Rebellion coming after we became the United States of America, but no matter - or surprise) Sovereignity didn't work!'. Which goes to show that his reading of history is aobut as weak as his reading of his own states constitution - probably got both from a state approved and endorsed textbook, no doubt.

Yes, prior to adopting the Constitution, the Founder's were worried about war, and even of some states allying themselves with European powers such as England, France or Spain, but they were not worried about sovereignity - frustrated over how best to respect it, definitely, that really comes through in the constitutional debates, especially over the matter of apportioning representation between the House and Senate - but far from attempting to discard soveriegnity, the Constitution is designed with sovereignity in mind so as to enable the states to operate in concert together - in harmony, not monotone.

Our national government was created and designed to avoid having their 13 states replay the Peloponnesian War - the details of which the founders were very familiar with, having had the benefit of an actual Education (meaning one which wasn't determined by, mandated and served up in prechewed Govt approved textbooks), and their fears were well founded, many states were already starting to arm... and not against a return of the British, but against eachother, such as,

"The unlicensed compacts between Virginia and Maryland, and between Pena. & N. Jersey--the troops raised and to be kept up by Massts... Trespasses of the States on the rights of each other. These are alarming symptoms, and may be daily apprehended as we are admonished by daily experience. See the law of Virginia restricting foreign vessels to certain ports--of Maryland in favor of vessels belonging to her own citizens--of N. York in favor of the same."

These Sovereign States instead chose to unite, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity - they felt that by uniting under a constitution which would define their relations to each other, and would secure their mutual interests under a common power - the Federal Government - (Federal is another one of those words worth looking into), while retaining their sovereignty to govern their internal affairs in a way which did not conflict with or infringe upon the rights of other states, that this would best serve their mutual interests.

But why unite as separate states, Federated under one Federal authority having only specific limited and enumerated powers over them; why not just blend and become one seamless Super State? One practical reason was that by remaining distinct independent and sovereign states, they would all benefit and prosper not only from their mutual association, but from the the experiences and attempted innovations undertaken by other states - for instance if one state, like Massachussetes say, attempted a State Healthcare system, the other states could sit back and watch to see whether or not it worked out as planned (BTW, it didn't). And especially in those cases where one states innovation went awry, the other states would be spared the widespread damage of implementing what might turn out to be a deeply flawed premise and plan, or on the other hand, if the innovation was proven to be a good idea and a successful plan, they could then benefit from the experiences of that first state - IF their people should so choose - and if some didn't so choose, they would be free to 'vote with their feet' and move to another state which better suited them.

But even more than this, by virtue of each state retaining the principle of sovereignity within a confederacy of united states, they would be more likely to escape the widespread passions of faction (such as those stirred up by and agitating for mandated healthcontrol, and those against it - ya know what I mean?), by the states retaining their sovereignity such factions would be stopped at the state lines, rather than being flamed and spread over and throughout all of what would otherwise be seamless and indistinct states, fanning over and consuming the entire nation, as Madison stated in Federalist #10,

"It is in vain to say, that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm: Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all, without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another, or the good of the whole.

The inference to which we are brought, is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed; and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controling its effects.

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote: It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government on the other hand enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good, and private rights, against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our enquiries are directed: Let me add that it is the great desideratum, by which alone this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.

By what means is this object attainable? "

And by what means is the object attainable? A Federated unity of sovereign states.

Now... you may well ask, if Federalism worked so well, why it is that we are now so beset by these clashing interests as never before? The answer is The 17th Amendment, which was the progressives greatest assault upon the constitution and the system of Federalism which helped to preserve it - but that's for another post.

The Federalist AND the Anti-Federalist papers (both of which, and much more, are each referenced under the relevant clauses of the US Constitution in the links above) express the benefits of a Federal union, and the fears which many, such as Patrick Henry, had OF union, that the initial structure of a federal nation of sovereign states was not stated strongly enough, they were deeply concerned that the initial wording of the constitution would quickly dissolve into a monolithic national power, reducing existing States into mere partitions of Federal Power, as were the provinces under the old Roman Republic. These were real fears, whose importance was grasped by both sides, and because of which the Constitution would not have been successfully ratified without the promise that it would immediately be amended with a Bill of Rights to address these (and other) concerns, as can be seen in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, which were added to emphasize and secure both the sovereign powers of the states and the rights of the people, so that they would not be defined or limited to only those few powers and rights listed in the Constitution.

It was, and IS vitally important to the prosperity of all, that each State be free to order and govern it's interests as it's citizens see fit, that the federal government be restrained as much as possible from infringing and imposing upon the sovereign powers of the separate states - Differences between how each state might handle its own affairs, was seen as a vital component, and benefit, of uniting under a Federal Government as 'a free and independent state' - Sovereign. The Federal Govt was designed to contain and restrict the powers of the States to their own interests, to enumerate the powers the federal government would have in their shared interests, and leave each state free to make such innovations as they might see as being valuable, and the success or failure of which, would be valuable for other states consideration, without one or more states failure inviting war and invasion from it's neighbors.

To which Callahan would undoubtedly feel compelled to point out to those of us who are blind, that Sen. Days is black, and Sen Green would note that we had a civil war over this matter, and what about the slavery of the blacks by rich white people which all that sovereignty and 'states rights' brought about?

Well... first a couple points. Although at the time of the Civil War all slaves were black, not all slave owners were white, of course the vast, vast majority of them were, there still were numbers of slave owners, but even in the south, who were free blacks. Second, not all of those slave owners, white or black, were rich. Third, Sovereignty was not the issue - after all the Northern states were also sovereign states, and determined to remain so. States Rights and Property Rights, were also not the issue, though pro-slavery apologists eagerly sought to clothe their arguments in them, but what they actually meant were not Property Rights, those rights fundamental to all Individual Rights, and stemming from the Natural Rights of the individual, no, what men such as Justice Taney (see not only his opinion in Dred Scott, but in the issue of 'mere property rights' such as in the Charles River Bridge case (which I noted in a previous post), which Daniel Webster lamented as being the "death of Property Rights", and which made Taney's judgment' in Dred Scott possible) had in mind was a mockery of 'Property Rights', dressing up the mere possession of something as conveying a right to that thing, be it land, bricks or people, and the 'right' to retain that property rested soleyupon the legislation of the government which not only allowed you to retain possession of them, and was competent to, and had the authority to, determine how much control you could have over your property, and when it was ok for the 'greater good' to take that property, or some benefit of it, from you (unless of course the legislation had something to do with the Constitution of the United States asserting that all individuals were born with inalienable rights, in that case those 'laws' (Natural 'Rights'! Pshaw!) were regarded by them as being merely tools of northern aggression and suitable for disregarding.

The key point here is that the southern slaveholding aristocracy, much like the modern leftist bureaucratic aristocracy, derided 'Natural Rights', and any claim to inalienable rights and the importance of property rights rooted in them, and instead claimed that 'rights' were bestowed, and withdrawn or diluted by, government legislation - or in other words "Might Makes Right". As I said above,

"What it is that actually defines and separates Left from Right - is that if you believe in inalienable rights derived from your nature as man, you are on the Right (and that leaves enough latitude of interpretation to accomodate views as diverse as those of Madison from Hamilton), if, on the other hand, you feel rights are instead a creation of the society and government, you are on the left. No matter your apparent agreements, they are incidental at best, politically speaking - no matter your religious beliefs, economic stances, or party affiliations, This is what defines and separates Left from Right. "

In short, Callahan, Green, Bray, Justice and Days share a deep affinity with their Democrat forebears who asserted the propriety of Slavery.

Yep. I did say it. Sen. Days, and the rest, have much more in common with ideas of the slavery promoting Jefferson Davis, than with the rights and liberties represented in that government seated in Jefferson City MO, or in Washington D.C..

Ok, enough of Senators Green (with envy), Justice (!), Days ('d and confused), Shoemyer (who would leave his footprint smeared upon all of our rights) and CallaHun, they are worth no further attention or consideration here.

Enabling the Arbitrary
More interesting for this series of posts on Justice, is how these outrageously ignorant and willfully stupid statements can appear to these Senators, and to those who vote for them, as if they were sensibe? The fact is, that to most anyone with the basic knowledge and understanding of Western Civilization and the history of Natural Rights and Individual Rights, these statements should leap out at them as clearly wrong - but to those lacking that knowledge - what was once considered the requisite basics of an education worthy of the name Education - in their blindness, they appear to have a certain amount of common sense all their own.

How is that possible?

In previous posts I've touched on some of the surface knowledge which those concerned with Justice must have, but it's time to dig in a bit deeper towards what it is that all such knowledge rests upon, because without it, all the edifices of civilization will continue crumbling down around all of our heads.

Before a person can reason well and soundly in matters beyond their daily scope of concerns and experiences, you need a way to check and ensure that your reasoning is valid and true, without that, you'll easily accept whatever has the appearance of truth. An easy example? Say, the sun revolves around the earth for instance - has all the appearance of being obviously true, doesn't it? But what you build upon such assumptions will take your further and further from the truth, and require more and more convoluted epicycles of justifications in order to maintain the appearance of truth, and all the while what you take to be 'common sense' moves further and further from what is trully sensible. You might even find yourself in the position of attacking those who have checked beyond the surface appearances and found that is true... Galileo for instance... or even Fox News (oh I know that ticked a few people off!).

To avoid that, you need to check and square your assumptions with proven experience - especially when it seems to be obviously true (remember the sun), or else all that you think you know may be little more than thin appearances strung together for the convenient satisfaction of appetites (you want it to be true), and on feeding, those appetites will grow into a ravening hunger. The stringing together of those conveniences and appetites rely upon one central error, that which Descartes unknowingly (I believe) helped to unleash upon modernity, the Arbitrary; a seemingly sensible statement, without basis in fact, which soon works it's way into the scaffolding of your every thought.

For example, from a site someone recommended to me, see if you can see what is wrong with the following example, and I don't mean this persons comedic talent. The problem has much to do with what enabled the earlier Senators comments to be made - proudly and knowingly ignorant and unconcerned about it... see if you can pick it out:

"...Mind Screw enough? Let's simplify;

Lets take the following (comedic example!) syllogism;

PREMISE 1: "Ayn Rand was a woman."
PREMISE 2: "All women are bitches."
CONCLUSION: "Ayn Rand was a bitch."

(Please note: the truth or falsehood of any of these premises or conclusions is not the point; the logic is perfectly sound)

The conclusion logically depends on the premises. The premises can thus be said to imply the conclusion. The conclusion assumes the premises to be true."

Do you see what it is? It reflects much of what is wrong with the world today in politics, in education and in faux science. What is wrong with this, is not in the structure of his premises and conclusion, it's found here: "Please note: the truth or falsehood of any of these premises or conclusions is not the point; the logic is perfectly sound"

No, the logic is not perfectly sound. While it's true some steps severed from the totality of the full logical syllogism might grammaticaly follow the basic rules, but the perfecting of such logic chopping is not an example of performing sound logic. You must not allow to be separated, or to ever allow yourself to focus on one to the exclusion, or even the inconsequentiality, of the other. The Premises must be sound and the form of the syllogism must be well constructed, before you are able to say "the logic is perfectly sound".

It seems a small thing, a minor problem, a technicallity even, but neglecting this, and enticing readers into allowing it, has been the stock in trade of men like Rousseau, Hume, Godwin, Kant, Mill, Hegel, Marx and Dewey. It is a method which relies upon, and imports into your thoughts, the unconscious acceptance of the arbitrary, a logical solvent which disconnects ideas from reality and turns thoughts to mush.

For all the so called innovations of Bacon, or 'improvements' of the likes of Kant & Mill, it was Aristotle who first, and best, laid out the basic rules of logic for all to see (Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics), and it has been the heftiest power tool in the toolbox of Western Civilization ever since (and more often than not, those 'innovations' and 'improvements' to his Organon, have been to our undoing). He simply laid out the conscious steps which a person needs to follow, in order to check their understanding against reality, and by it's rules even today, though we are often unaware of them, even usually unaware of them, we still examine and check the likelihood of whether or not the information we've gathered is true - or not. Aristotle also worked out a pretty exhaustive list of way's in which people might unintentionally, or intentionally, fool themselves or others, into making errors in our reasoning, which he lists as the common forms of fallacies (On Sophistical Refutations). If your reasoning contains fallacies, then your statements and conclusions based upon them, cannot be reliable - but following those rules, while necessary, is not enough (BTW, if you think you don't ever mess with such concerns, if you ever use "If.. then..." as I just did (and as you probably just did as well), then you are using them).

Salesmen, Politicians and the Press engage in these fallacies of sloppy thinking all day long, and they can lead to some really disastrous results (Glowbull Warming anyone?), especially if concerning the doings or promises of someone having power over your life. The curious thing is that many people do check for the presence of fallacies in the statements of influential people, you'll often hear politico's and talking heads talk about "Strawman arguments", and such, which is all right out of Aristotle. But, the problem is, like the example above, they very rarely check beyond whether or not the technical rules of the the syllogism have been satisfied, and if not, of which fallacy was committed - but that is only doing the bare minimum - and it isn't enough.

Have a look here, Aristotle, at the start of his Posterior Analytics that,

"...What I now assert is that at all events we do know by demonstration... a syllogism productive of scientific knowledge, a syllogism, that is, the grasp of which is eo ipso ["by that very fact"]such knowledge. Assuming then that my thesis as to the nature of scientific knowing is correct, the premises of demonstrated knowledge must be true, primary, immediate, better known than and prior to the conclusion, which is further related to them as effect to cause. Unless these conditions are satisfied, the basic truths will not be 'appropriate' to the conclusion. Syllogism there may indeed be without these conditions, but such syllogism, not being productive of scientific knowledge, will not be demonstration. The premisses must be true... The premisses must be the causes of the conclusion, better known than it, and prior to it; its causes, since we possess scientific knowledge of a thing only when we know its cause; prior, in order to be causes; antecedently known, this antecedent knowledge being not our mere understanding of the meaning, but knowledge of the fact as well. "

What he means by "The premisses must be the causes of the conclusion, better known than it, and prior to it", is that if one portion of their statement is false, then the others which are developed upon it, cannot be trusted, even though the rest of the argument seems to follow all the rules.

To follow the 'form' of the syllogism, checking the rules and for the presence of fallacies - but not the validity of it premises, is like a pilot doing a thorough check of his plane before taking off, but forgetting to see if he has enough gas to get beyond takeoff. Do not allow it. Refuse it's many manifestations, do not accept the the notion of the contingent vs necessary. Learn to check for not just the appearance of sense, but for the validity of its premises, and refuse to engage in those conversations which are based upon false ones, it is the Reason destroyer and the sower of evil (not that I feel strongly about it or anything).

Someone out there might say "Oh... come on Van... that's crazy, isolated exercises in logic don't really mean anything in real life"... well... first off, I'd suggest you have another look at the statements of the senators which I opened this post with. If that's not enough, then I'd suggest you take a look at this from the L.A. Times,

"The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.

Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: "All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA."

One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush's final budget year."

Obama's statement of "All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA." was accepted as being uncontroversial and 'perfectly sound' when he made it, as was nearly every other apparently sensible thing he said during his campaign... despite the fact that nothing in his record as senator or candidate suggested that he had ever practiced any such thing. School records, scholarship records, real estate records, economic policy records, relationships with people such as Bill Ayers, Rev Jeremiah "GD America" Wright , etc, and such showed complete antipathy to 'transparency' and honesty, and were further borne out right away in his nominations of Geitner and each and every Czar put in place. There is nothing about Obama's person or record that has ever suggested that his words bore any resemblance to reality, or that he cared if they did, but if you accept that an argument or statement can be 'perfectly sound' without reference to, and in the face of abundant evidence which at the very least suggests that it has no foundation in fact - your words and thoughts do not, will not, and cannot, have any relation to reality.

That is not sound, perfect or otherwise. And neither is this,

"On March 16 to mark annual Sunshine Week, designed to promote openness in government, Obama applauded himself by issuing a statement:

"As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever."

However, a new study out March 15 by George Washington University's National Security Archive finds less than one-third of the 90 federal agencies that process such FOIA requests have made significant changes in their procedures since Obama's 2009 memo."

The Press, which should know better, it is its job after all, accepted Obama's statement,

"As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever. "

. without question, without checking to see if his premises had any basis in fact. Can you square that with Aristotle's "The premisses must be the causes of the conclusion, better known than it, and prior to it"?

I sure can't. Is there anything in Obama's past that gives any credence to his concern and pride in being 'open and transparent'?

Now of course anyone can be lied to, but when the facts and evidence is clearly available to indicate that you shouldn't even remotely accept such an assertion, and yet you do, unquestioningly, there is a problem here, and the problem goes far beyond the surface of 'mere logical technique', this is an indication which goes beyond syllogisms and logic chopping, and deep into the heart of your very relation to reality, to truth, morality and Justice.

Where do we start with this?

Why, at the beginning of course. The first questions that must be asked are, What is Real? and How do we know it? These were once the foundations of knowledge, during the era of our Founding Fathers for instance, and if you weren't aware of them, you couldn't credibly claim to be 'educated', and your preposterous assertions of "A hungry man is not free!" or "Having to pay for healthcare insurance, that is not *freedom*, that's oppression!" " would have had you laughed at by everyone from the butcher to the baker to the candlestick maker. If you don't know the answers to these questions, or worse, if like most moderns you claim 'no one can really know that', then you will not be able to tell whether someone is telling you the truth or blowing the mere appearance of sunshine up your butt. My proof? This,

"As Sunshine Week begins, I want to applaud everyone who has worked to increase transparency in government and recommit my administration to be the most open and transparent ever. "

, came as a surprise to the L.A. Times and to all those who put stock in what it, and the rest of the lamestream media, has to say.
Need I say more? Really? Ok...then how about the many cases of falsified 'Hate Speech' such as this at GWU?

...or the Columbia Prof who noosed herself?

And why not? This shouldn't be surprising to anyone, if you don't believe reality is knowable (and from Hume & Kant on through to post modernism, few in wackedemia, or 'educated' in it, think we can really know anything at all), then why not fake what you know 'bad people' must be thinking of doing, so they can pay for their crimes? Why not? It's not as if anyone is likely to try and look further than what appears to be true... right?

As I was sa;ying, the first question that must be asked is, What is Real? and How do we know it? Enter Aristotle's Metaphysics... next in these posts.

[Note: I've changed the 'Obamao' witticisms that peppered this post, to 'Obama' - what once seemed cute, is now only tiresome]