I have no need of monsters - reality is terrifying enough for me
I have no need of monsters. I do not need Obama to be the most narcissistic narcissist since man first heard the echo of his own voice - his creating the 'seal of the office of the president-elect', suffices rather well for me. I do not need him to be the anti-Christ, his putting his long held disdain for the that document which he has never shown any glimpse of understanding - the U.S. Constitution - into destructive practice (see his past and forthcoming legislative efforts), is terrifying enough for me.
I do not need Bildeburghers or black helicopters, the actions of Paulson, Geitner and House and Senate who feel no need to read legislation before voting on it, and Serv.Gov have me quaking in my boots enough already.
I have no need for elaborate monsters, there are real ones afoot here and now. Like the movie makers of the 30's & 40's understood, the monster you don't see is far more real than the one you do. Our monsters are non-corporeal Ideas, and they animate the bodies of ordinary people in such a way, that, even more so than sci-fi Pod People, they horrify me today. They horrify me because they are living breathing people, here among us, living next door or even with you in your own home. They are made far more monstrous than any CGI or movie make-up by what they uncomprehendingly believe, than any fictional ghoul could ever conjure up... and what makes them more dangerous than any magical talisman or spell - they believe they are right - without understanding what they believe - they believe they are right.
Hitler was no monster. Portraying him so only makes him only safer to our sensibilities, and as a consequence even more of a threat. Hitler was worse than a monster, he was a human being who believed that his sophistic estimations and deductions which he "clearly and distinctly" imagined to be true, were correct.
Some of the most celebrated minds in 19th & 20th century America thought it perfectly right and proper to use the Govt to allow and disallow who could, and who could not, marry. They felt themselves perfectly in the right, and competent to, judge who was worth allowing to have children, and who should be prevented from ever doing so.
As Progressives, in both the Democrat and Republican parties, there were large numbers who were for eugenic programs, including Oliver Wendell Holmes on the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court. And they put those ideas into law.
I've no need of monsters, we've had real people, otherwise kind and sensible people, willing to do monstrous things because, without understanding what they believed, and content with that, they thought they were right.
I've no need of conspiracies, we've had individuals perfectly willing to act in the open to destroy our way of life, because they didn't understand what they were doing, and they were self satisfied in thinking that they were right to do so.
We've had Truman attempting to nationalize the steel industry, we've had Nixon decreeing wage and price controls. We've had congress passing legislation forcing businesses to compromise with, and allow a say in their decisions to those who wish them ruin, labor unions. We've had two Presidents and Secretaries willing to nationalize financial and industrial institutions... to destroy the free market 'in order to save the free market'. We have people seriously thinking about the sensibility of states seceding from the union. We've had... we've had much worse than that.
There has been worse, and I've no doubt that there is worse coming.
And it is coming, and it is able to come, because something worse than an evil sorcerer has been at work; a well intentioned philosopher, centuries ago, made it possible for people to publicly, and with intellectual respectability, to advance the most spurious nonsense based on the proposition that it could be true, and if that could be true, then this must be true, and therefore these X things must be done.... And part and parcel of that, his ideas made it nearly impossible for those who innocently read his thoughts, to detect errors in their own thoughts, or even feel the need to do so.
That long ago foolish philosopher was Descartes, and because he didn't think, we're doomed - unless we learn to spot and avoid his errors, but that would require doing away with our schools - but people believe our schools are good, even though they are bad... we may indeed be doomed, doomed to apply his errors, to our lives.
And he was followed by many other philosophers who consciously, and unconsciously, have done much worse.
And the result is that today we have no need of monsters... we have people, willing to do what they are pleased to say is right, and 'for our own good'.
Horrifying.
To be continued soon....
Monday, June 29, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The Ongoing Meltdown - Economic only? Don't you wish
Many people have expressed surprise at our current 'economic meltdown. If anything, I've been surprised that the meltdown has taken this long to happen. I very much agree with an article "Why the meltdown should have surprised no one" written by Peter Schiff (recently referred to by Scipio in his post "Have A Bad Day"), that the economic meltdown should have been no surprise to anybody. Schiff is apparently of the Austrian school of economics, most widely associated with Ludwig von Mises. The Austrian's are far and away the best of the recognized 'economic schools' out there, I think they still miss the mark in some areas, especially as they move away from von Mises original ideas, but not but not by much, especially in comparison with their competition.
The worst part of all this discussion of the economy and the economic meltdown however, is that people seem to think that the economy is some separate machinery which operates independently of 'we the people', and that it can be tinkered with, adjusted, 'reset' without such actions affecting or having anything to do with those who make the economy run - you and me.
Talk about fantasy.
Sidestepping all of the economic schools and the issues which divide them, I can give a short summary of an economy, as being dependent upon three factors:
1 - A moral, rational people,
2 - at liberty to make their own decisions (economic and otherwise),
3 - under a government of objective written laws, directed towards preserving their liberty and property
Add those 3 factors together, and the result will be productivity - economic and otherwise.
Such a system and such a people are able to unleash previously undreamt of wealth from the same nature that all the world has experienced nearly unchanged over all of human history. But only because they are able to command nature to obey them, because they obey it, they are in conformance to reality, to truth, externally and internally; and the industrial, technological fruits of the last 200 years are a testament to that.
However, any interference or contamination in any one of those three factors, will dilute and disrupt the other two, reducing productivity - economically and otherwise. Such actions introduce a disconnect between the people and reality and their ability to be in conformance with what is true, and then more and more so, error becomes the product produced.
Such interferences are introduced, in economic terms, through abandoning tangible values such as Gold from the currency(see Richard Salsman's "Can fiat money be managed effectifely?"); in political terms, by moving away from the principle of being a nation of laws, towards being a nation of men; and in societal terms, by moving away from the importance of integrity and character, towards a therapeutic concern for compassion towards flaws and a demand for fairness in outcomes.
The 'Error' such an economy produces, is referred to in economic terms, as inefficiency, waste; political terms, a loss of rights and freedoms moving towards tyranny, and in societal terms, immorality, sin and even evil.
Willingly or unwittingly, their ability to act rationally is reduced. Even those who still try to be moral and rational, are working with contaminated goods, information and tools, and so their output cannot be in accordance with reality, and the system becomes unbalanced.
Each attempt at correcting such a situation by adding more and more counter balances instead of by finding and removing the accreted errors, only makes the situation worse, the vibration intensifies, and eventually the entire machinery will all come to a crashing halt.
I have zero faith that any solution will be found by any party - if it involves anything less than removing the gunk that has caused us to wobble off into such a violently unbalanced situation as we find ourselves in at this time.
But that gunk is not just in Washington D.C., it is in us, in, as that article so well points out, in our unwillingness to perceive what is real. Of those three factors of the economy I mentioned above, the first, a rational and moral people, is the most necessary, and as long as we discard that, or seek to evade that (which amounts to the same), it will all come to a crashing halt, unable to make a proper connection to reality, to truth, and all that will be produced is error - inefficiency, waste, a loss of rights and freedoms, tyranny, immorality, sin, or in a word: Evil.
As a result, all that is good and all that is beautiful, and all that is true, will we remain unproduced, and the 'market' will be flooded with nothing but shoddy knock-off substitutes... and the world will have to wait until another people comes along able to be moral and rational and able to perceive what is real, and what is true and what is good and what is beautiful; and being willing and able to see and respect them, is once again able to produce them.
Even if our constitution were purged tomorrow of all of the progressive accretions slopped onto it by the progressives since the late 1800's... it would still be a long and slow process of purging our own minds and souls of those same accretions, before we are again able to interact, unimpeded, with reality and what is true.
Such a legislative and judicial purge would certainly help, it would at least be a start. But unless we intellectually, and spiritually degunk as well, a cleaned up constitution would only be ignored - as indeed our non-representing-representatives in Washington D.C. have recently discovered they are to do at will right now.
There is no existing law giving the president or congress the ability to do any part of what they are doing, right now.
They are just doing it.
They are doing it, because they know that the people have willingly allowed themselves to be no longer concerned with what is real and what is true - everyone is quite content playing make believe. This video is a prime example of this,
We look at the utter insanity rehearsed in this video, and in disbelief, we shake our heads "It can't be real, they can't be serious", well it's true, it can't be real - not in the sense that it could ever be successfuly implemented in a nation expecting to remain a nation, undivided or otherwise - and yes, they are serious.
It is a game they play with the utmost sincerity. Not because it can be possible, but because they want it to be, which is easily done, if you aren't too concerned with reality in the first place.
The source of our pervasive willingness to play make believe with reality, will be the subject of my next post, looking at Descartes and the philosophic game of rationalism, which with the introduction of his "Cogito Ergo Sum" and his Critical Method of Doubt, we've been using to play games with reality ever since.
The game will soon be up however. There can be only so much rampant error before a system experiences a massive crash. And after such a crash, you have two choices, fix the problem, or ignore it and pretend it can't get even worse.
I'm not seeing many of those attending to the crash that are paying much attention to reality.
I'll make my own prediction here, our current mess, and cleaning it up, will not remain confined to mere economic matters, and recovering from both the mess, and the blinkered attempts to clean it up, will be... very... very... messy.
The worst part of all this discussion of the economy and the economic meltdown however, is that people seem to think that the economy is some separate machinery which operates independently of 'we the people', and that it can be tinkered with, adjusted, 'reset' without such actions affecting or having anything to do with those who make the economy run - you and me.
Talk about fantasy.
Sidestepping all of the economic schools and the issues which divide them, I can give a short summary of an economy, as being dependent upon three factors:
1 - A moral, rational people,
2 - at liberty to make their own decisions (economic and otherwise),
3 - under a government of objective written laws, directed towards preserving their liberty and property
Add those 3 factors together, and the result will be productivity - economic and otherwise.
Such a system and such a people are able to unleash previously undreamt of wealth from the same nature that all the world has experienced nearly unchanged over all of human history. But only because they are able to command nature to obey them, because they obey it, they are in conformance to reality, to truth, externally and internally; and the industrial, technological fruits of the last 200 years are a testament to that.
However, any interference or contamination in any one of those three factors, will dilute and disrupt the other two, reducing productivity - economically and otherwise. Such actions introduce a disconnect between the people and reality and their ability to be in conformance with what is true, and then more and more so, error becomes the product produced.
Such interferences are introduced, in economic terms, through abandoning tangible values such as Gold from the currency(see Richard Salsman's "Can fiat money be managed effectifely?"); in political terms, by moving away from the principle of being a nation of laws, towards being a nation of men; and in societal terms, by moving away from the importance of integrity and character, towards a therapeutic concern for compassion towards flaws and a demand for fairness in outcomes.
The 'Error' such an economy produces, is referred to in economic terms, as inefficiency, waste; political terms, a loss of rights and freedoms moving towards tyranny, and in societal terms, immorality, sin and even evil.
Willingly or unwittingly, their ability to act rationally is reduced. Even those who still try to be moral and rational, are working with contaminated goods, information and tools, and so their output cannot be in accordance with reality, and the system becomes unbalanced.
Each attempt at correcting such a situation by adding more and more counter balances instead of by finding and removing the accreted errors, only makes the situation worse, the vibration intensifies, and eventually the entire machinery will all come to a crashing halt.
I have zero faith that any solution will be found by any party - if it involves anything less than removing the gunk that has caused us to wobble off into such a violently unbalanced situation as we find ourselves in at this time.
But that gunk is not just in Washington D.C., it is in us, in, as that article so well points out, in our unwillingness to perceive what is real. Of those three factors of the economy I mentioned above, the first, a rational and moral people, is the most necessary, and as long as we discard that, or seek to evade that (which amounts to the same), it will all come to a crashing halt, unable to make a proper connection to reality, to truth, and all that will be produced is error - inefficiency, waste, a loss of rights and freedoms, tyranny, immorality, sin, or in a word: Evil.
As a result, all that is good and all that is beautiful, and all that is true, will we remain unproduced, and the 'market' will be flooded with nothing but shoddy knock-off substitutes... and the world will have to wait until another people comes along able to be moral and rational and able to perceive what is real, and what is true and what is good and what is beautiful; and being willing and able to see and respect them, is once again able to produce them.
Even if our constitution were purged tomorrow of all of the progressive accretions slopped onto it by the progressives since the late 1800's... it would still be a long and slow process of purging our own minds and souls of those same accretions, before we are again able to interact, unimpeded, with reality and what is true.
Such a legislative and judicial purge would certainly help, it would at least be a start. But unless we intellectually, and spiritually degunk as well, a cleaned up constitution would only be ignored - as indeed our non-representing-representatives in Washington D.C. have recently discovered they are to do at will right now.
There is no existing law giving the president or congress the ability to do any part of what they are doing, right now.
They are just doing it.
They are doing it, because they know that the people have willingly allowed themselves to be no longer concerned with what is real and what is true - everyone is quite content playing make believe. This video is a prime example of this,
We look at the utter insanity rehearsed in this video, and in disbelief, we shake our heads "It can't be real, they can't be serious", well it's true, it can't be real - not in the sense that it could ever be successfuly implemented in a nation expecting to remain a nation, undivided or otherwise - and yes, they are serious.
It is a game they play with the utmost sincerity. Not because it can be possible, but because they want it to be, which is easily done, if you aren't too concerned with reality in the first place.
The source of our pervasive willingness to play make believe with reality, will be the subject of my next post, looking at Descartes and the philosophic game of rationalism, which with the introduction of his "Cogito Ergo Sum" and his Critical Method of Doubt, we've been using to play games with reality ever since.
The game will soon be up however. There can be only so much rampant error before a system experiences a massive crash. And after such a crash, you have two choices, fix the problem, or ignore it and pretend it can't get even worse.
I'm not seeing many of those attending to the crash that are paying much attention to reality.
I'll make my own prediction here, our current mess, and cleaning it up, will not remain confined to mere economic matters, and recovering from both the mess, and the blinkered attempts to clean it up, will be... very... very... messy.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Memorial Day, for those who said "If I don’t do it, then who will?"
From American Battle Monuments Commision,
Keeping in mind that while I'm not technically religious, I recognize that what Washington and the other Founders were speaking about, aiming towards, was what I do think and feel to be very, very real, and criticaly important to our lives and our nation... and I can tell you it has very little to do with 'talking snake stories'. Washington also noted,
Was he speaking of the printed words, or their meaning? And with so few, if any, able to distinguish between the two, is there any wisdom in trying?
What did he mean when he said,
It is perhaps not improper to close out with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
"The Commission administers, operates, and maintains 24 permanent American burial grounds on foreign soil. Presently there are 124,909 U.S. war dead interred at these cemeteries, 30,921 of World War I, 93,238 of World War II and 750 of the Mexican War. Additionally 6,177 American veterans and others are interred in the Mexico City and Corozal American Cemeteries. We sort of live by the motto of our first chairman, Gen. John J. Pershing, who said,
'Time will not dim the glory of their deeds'"
Neither will time diminish our debt to them, rather, it magnifies that debt with each passing day we are able to enjoy the freedoms they fought for.
And this photo brings home the true meaning of what they did, and amid all that they've given us, reminds us of what their loss truly means...,
Mary McHugh, lying on the grave of her fiance, Army Sgt. James John Regan, at Arlington National Cemetery. He was a star lacrosse player in college, and Instead of taking a scholarship to law school or a financial services job, Regan followed a calling to the military, where he became an Army Ranger and served two tours of duty in Afghanistan and two in Iraq...For Memorial Day, I'll let others do the rest of the, sobering, talking. Beginning with a few comments by presidents who not only knew how to be Presidential, but who understood what this day memorializes. A few words from George Washington, starting with his "Prayer for the Nation" written at Newburg, June 8, 1783, and sent to the governors of all the states,
"He said, 'If I don't do it, then who will do it?'" said Regan's fiancee, Mary McHugh, a medical student at Emory University who, like scores of others at the Park Avenue house yesterday, wore Regan's high school graduation photo clipped to her shirt. "He recognized it as an option and he couldn't not do it."
Almighty God, we make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy Holy protection: that Thou wilt incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government and entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another and for their fellow citizens of the United States at large. And finally, that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation. Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord.... and, at the request of that Congress which had passed the Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of "Public prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and single favors of Almighty God".
Amen.
Keeping in mind that while I'm not technically religious, I recognize that what Washington and the other Founders were speaking about, aiming towards, was what I do think and feel to be very, very real, and criticaly important to our lives and our nation... and I can tell you it has very little to do with 'talking snake stories'. Washington also noted,
"It is rightly impossible to govern the world without God and the Bible."
Was he speaking of the printed words, or their meaning? And with so few, if any, able to distinguish between the two, is there any wisdom in trying?
What did he mean when he said,
"No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the invisible affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.... We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven cannot be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which heaven itself has ordained."The full measure of his meaning was taken and given by those we honor on this, and every, Memorial Day... spend some time giving thought to what their words and deeds meant and continue to mean.
It is perhaps not improper to close out with Lincoln's Gettysburg Address:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.This Memorial Day, remember....
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate... we can not consecrate... we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government : of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Spread the Light and Light the Fire
In the Comments section, the wise Scipio of "The Return of Scipio" mentioned,
"The rise of Obama is our nation is an indicator of how great has been our decline as a people..."
It is a very tempting thought, an enticing fear.
And very logical.
But I've got to respectfully quibble with that. Because ya know, what you know, and what I know, about what is happening to us "as a people", comes mostly from those who have visibly declined as a people - the relatively small amount of people who are pleased to call themselves 'the elites'.
But ask yourselves something, who among us hasn't had the sensation of seeing the NEWS and then looking around them and saying..."What?! Where is that happening...?"
Looking no further than myself (looking at TV shows, News, etc), I often shake my head and despair. But I began to notice a few years ago, especially among my kids friends… that I see very little of this all consuming decay - at least nothing on the scale which popular conceptions would have us believe. This has been very disorienting to my pretensions of philosophical crystal ball gazing. Hear me out on this, I know it is a tenuous thought that I've been thinking, and I don't have the time or space to flesh it out much more now, but give it a whirl about the cranium and see if it doesn't have some brightness to it – after all, the alternative is complete darkness.
"How great has been our decline as a people" rests on the tried and true 'the snake dies from the head down' theory of political philosophy. Chop off the head of the snake, and the whole snake dies.
It's certainly not a difficult progression to imagine, and historically it has been replayed over and again throughout history - it practically IS history. A united civilization rises, prospers, even conquers, and then in leisure and wealth, begins to contemplate, and then to question all the beliefs of their ancestors. Not being able to find satisfactory answers to fundamental questions, their questioning makes a subtle change into doubting. In short order, what began with questions of “Why does God (or The Gods) allow this…” become “Why would God (or The Gods) allow this ?!” and the moral truths and practices of their ancestors become reduced to ‘talking snake stories’, which are ridiculed, and fresh with the belief that they are smarter than their ancestors, they discard such ‘superstitions’ and focus upon things, pleasures and vices as goals and ends in themselves.
Personally I don’t believe that leisure and wealth and prosperity are problems, not in and of themselves… but wealth does allow a distancing from interacting with reality. As the prosperous are distanced from the unforgiving corrections of nature and reality, they begin to substitute preferences and whims for Reason. I’ve gone over this elsewhere, where Voltaire artfully thanked Rousseau for the gift of his ‘Social Contract’, saying
This land was unique in history, in having to deal with reality without a supply of conquered and pliant victims to prey upon. Every other peoples, as their elites lost contact with reality, they eventually sickened and died, because their bad ideas had nothing and no one to correct them. Bad ideas kill. Immorality, is but rebelling against truth for pleasure's sake - the baddest of bad ideas.
Our elites would very much like to reenact the ancient dance of metals, with men of gold, falling to silver, then bronze, then lead and being wiped out by another taking their place. They of course, believe that they know better and can ‘re-form’ man and history. The motivating conceit of progressives, from Rousseau on (I could include Plato too, but I really hate blaming him), has been that there needs to be an expert put in power to direct everything from personal hygiene, to how 'the people' should live, work, the thoughts they should be allowed to think... but of course as their thinking has become progressively more detached from reality, it becomes apparent that the snakes head is dying, and once the head of the snake dies, the civilization dies. Chop off the head of the snake, and the whole snake dies, and of course, from the progressives perspective, the snake can't live, move or eat, without a head to tell it what to do.
But.
But in every other civilization in history, the elites were the society, they were the only ones, the only ones, to think, and plan, and act, and they controlled the rest of the population. That is not our world! That is not a Free Market, that is not Capitalism, that is not a world of Law and Order - which of course is why our elites keep trying to do away with the Free Market, Capitalism and Law and Order based upon, and governed by, a written Constitution.
America, from the beginning, no matter the proregressives flaming conceit, America has been not a lifeless beast to be led by its head, as are kingdoms and empires, but a people who are alive and thinking in place for themselves - each person, each family, each neighborhood, does it's own thinking and living, themselves. They still attend church, they still revere truth and reality... yes, certainly we have degraded from even a century ago, but even at our current levels, we are a greater manifestation of moral, thinking, productive people, than the world has ever, ever, known.
We, as was mentioned above, despite 50 years of propaganda and govt coercion, do not yet fear guns. The head of the snake is indeed diseased, gangrenous even, but for the first time in history, in the place of what traditionally had been little more than the thoughtless body of the snake, is instead, a living, truth revering, independent people, and even more importantly, we are not isolated from communicating and organizing amongst each other, once we finally realize that merely shaking our heads at the decadent head, is no longer a sufficient response.
This is the real historical novelty we possess, and which the progressive elite fear more than anything else. We are not dependent upon them. And we still think for ourselves.
Every other culture in history, once those in power decayed, the people had no other access to history, no other access to information about what was Beautiful and True and Good, but what the dead head of the snake told them, and consequently no other options but to follow them into dissolution and destruction.
The 'Tea Parties' springing up around the country, are instances of the people recognizing that the 'plans' they are being told to follow, don't measure up, and they are organizing, and beginning to think on their own, and thinking of how best to act to correct this situation, On. Their. Own.
This IS unprecedented.
It remains to be seen of course, whether or not ‘We The People’ can disinfect or discard the head and/or generate a new one.
We'll see.
But Truth is a powerful disinfectant.
Ask Lazarus.
Don’t give up on U.S. people, if we talk to each other, if we, with reflection and reason and respect for what is The Good, The Beautiful and The True, make the effort to not just do something, but do what is needed… well… amazing things just may be possible still. As Samuel Adams said about seemingly darker times,
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”
Don’t hide your fire under a bushel people. Take this occasion of the Tea Party movements, and make them become something good and effective. Spread the light and light the fire. It is my contention that blogs like Scipio's, and One Cosmos, and mine, are helping to do just that, and if we give just a bit of action to our words… well, then we’ll see what we’ll see.
"The rise of Obama is our nation is an indicator of how great has been our decline as a people..."
It is a very tempting thought, an enticing fear.
And very logical.
But I've got to respectfully quibble with that. Because ya know, what you know, and what I know, about what is happening to us "as a people", comes mostly from those who have visibly declined as a people - the relatively small amount of people who are pleased to call themselves 'the elites'.
But ask yourselves something, who among us hasn't had the sensation of seeing the NEWS and then looking around them and saying..."What?! Where is that happening...?"
Looking no further than myself (looking at TV shows, News, etc), I often shake my head and despair. But I began to notice a few years ago, especially among my kids friends… that I see very little of this all consuming decay - at least nothing on the scale which popular conceptions would have us believe. This has been very disorienting to my pretensions of philosophical crystal ball gazing. Hear me out on this, I know it is a tenuous thought that I've been thinking, and I don't have the time or space to flesh it out much more now, but give it a whirl about the cranium and see if it doesn't have some brightness to it – after all, the alternative is complete darkness.
"How great has been our decline as a people" rests on the tried and true 'the snake dies from the head down' theory of political philosophy. Chop off the head of the snake, and the whole snake dies.
It's certainly not a difficult progression to imagine, and historically it has been replayed over and again throughout history - it practically IS history. A united civilization rises, prospers, even conquers, and then in leisure and wealth, begins to contemplate, and then to question all the beliefs of their ancestors. Not being able to find satisfactory answers to fundamental questions, their questioning makes a subtle change into doubting. In short order, what began with questions of “Why does God (or The Gods) allow this…” become “Why would God (or The Gods) allow this ?!” and the moral truths and practices of their ancestors become reduced to ‘talking snake stories’, which are ridiculed, and fresh with the belief that they are smarter than their ancestors, they discard such ‘superstitions’ and focus upon things, pleasures and vices as goals and ends in themselves.
Personally I don’t believe that leisure and wealth and prosperity are problems, not in and of themselves… but wealth does allow a distancing from interacting with reality. As the prosperous are distanced from the unforgiving corrections of nature and reality, they begin to substitute preferences and whims for Reason. I’ve gone over this elsewhere, where Voltaire artfully thanked Rousseau for the gift of his ‘Social Contract’, saying
"I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages in Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actionsOur founders were too steeped in reality and morality to take Rousseau’s offer either. Our Founders still had the memory of their founders, who had tried to live the communist/socialist dream, and were nearly destroyed by it – but here in America, with no deluded populace to depend (leach) upon to enable them to become distanced from reality... communism nearly killed them, but Gov. Bradford returned private property to the colony, and the puritan work ethic was born.
has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves."
This land was unique in history, in having to deal with reality without a supply of conquered and pliant victims to prey upon. Every other peoples, as their elites lost contact with reality, they eventually sickened and died, because their bad ideas had nothing and no one to correct them. Bad ideas kill. Immorality, is but rebelling against truth for pleasure's sake - the baddest of bad ideas.
Our elites would very much like to reenact the ancient dance of metals, with men of gold, falling to silver, then bronze, then lead and being wiped out by another taking their place. They of course, believe that they know better and can ‘re-form’ man and history. The motivating conceit of progressives, from Rousseau on (I could include Plato too, but I really hate blaming him), has been that there needs to be an expert put in power to direct everything from personal hygiene, to how 'the people' should live, work, the thoughts they should be allowed to think... but of course as their thinking has become progressively more detached from reality, it becomes apparent that the snakes head is dying, and once the head of the snake dies, the civilization dies. Chop off the head of the snake, and the whole snake dies, and of course, from the progressives perspective, the snake can't live, move or eat, without a head to tell it what to do.
But.
But in every other civilization in history, the elites were the society, they were the only ones, the only ones, to think, and plan, and act, and they controlled the rest of the population. That is not our world! That is not a Free Market, that is not Capitalism, that is not a world of Law and Order - which of course is why our elites keep trying to do away with the Free Market, Capitalism and Law and Order based upon, and governed by, a written Constitution.
America, from the beginning, no matter the proregressives flaming conceit, America has been not a lifeless beast to be led by its head, as are kingdoms and empires, but a people who are alive and thinking in place for themselves - each person, each family, each neighborhood, does it's own thinking and living, themselves. They still attend church, they still revere truth and reality... yes, certainly we have degraded from even a century ago, but even at our current levels, we are a greater manifestation of moral, thinking, productive people, than the world has ever, ever, known.
We, as was mentioned above, despite 50 years of propaganda and govt coercion, do not yet fear guns. The head of the snake is indeed diseased, gangrenous even, but for the first time in history, in the place of what traditionally had been little more than the thoughtless body of the snake, is instead, a living, truth revering, independent people, and even more importantly, we are not isolated from communicating and organizing amongst each other, once we finally realize that merely shaking our heads at the decadent head, is no longer a sufficient response.
This is the real historical novelty we possess, and which the progressive elite fear more than anything else. We are not dependent upon them. And we still think for ourselves.
Every other culture in history, once those in power decayed, the people had no other access to history, no other access to information about what was Beautiful and True and Good, but what the dead head of the snake told them, and consequently no other options but to follow them into dissolution and destruction.
The 'Tea Parties' springing up around the country, are instances of the people recognizing that the 'plans' they are being told to follow, don't measure up, and they are organizing, and beginning to think on their own, and thinking of how best to act to correct this situation, On. Their. Own.
This IS unprecedented.
It remains to be seen of course, whether or not ‘We The People’ can disinfect or discard the head and/or generate a new one.
We'll see.
But Truth is a powerful disinfectant.
Ask Lazarus.
Don’t give up on U.S. people, if we talk to each other, if we, with reflection and reason and respect for what is The Good, The Beautiful and The True, make the effort to not just do something, but do what is needed… well… amazing things just may be possible still. As Samuel Adams said about seemingly darker times,
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.”
Don’t hide your fire under a bushel people. Take this occasion of the Tea Party movements, and make them become something good and effective. Spread the light and light the fire. It is my contention that blogs like Scipio's, and One Cosmos, and mine, are helping to do just that, and if we give just a bit of action to our words… well, then we’ll see what we’ll see.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
A Bit More Context
In my last post, I looked at the immediate context of the "CIA Torture Memo’s”, but as was recently pointed out to me, there is an even wider context which should be included as well. That the conclusion that harsh interrogation methods needs to be resorted to, let alone torture, is an admission of your own widespread lack of intelligence, and an act of desperation.
If we were talking about a lone deranged individual, this could be forgiven, but we are not. We are talking about a group of fanatical, theocratic, fascist, thugs and murderers who prefer to use terrorist actions in order to impose their plans on others.
We knew they were out there.
We've known that they’ve been wanting to not just hurt us, but bring us down, for 50 years.
They were a known and gathering threat, strengthening and spreading out over the globe and publicly taking credit for attacking the west in general and America in particular, for over thirty years.
We not only did little or nothing to stop them, we did little or nothing to infiltrate them. We looked at their pitiful size and in classic hubristic mode, snickered, swore, swatted and looked away.
We unintelligently declined to put gathering intelligence on them as a low, or no, priority issue.
With that additional context in place, 9/11 happened, we were caught demonstrating our lack of intelligence (in several more ways than one) on a movement of people who had publicly declared hatred and who had repeatedly declared war upon us decades ago, and on 9/11 we suddenly realized to our own horror, that their pitiful non-aligned size, far from being an insurmountable weakness, it was in fact a huge weapon against us, and with it they could indeed hurt
Us, very, very badly.
We found ourselves in desperate circumstances, and we had no intelligent option but to resort to desperate measures to illuminate our self sustained blindness. Governments have in the past (al queda, Imperial Japan, etc), and will again, fail to realize or properly respond to real and growing threats, either out of hubris or for purely political reasons. Their failure may not only increase the danger to the nation from the original threat, but it may also put those who are governing, into a state of desperation (whether actually or politically doesn't matter, they do not distinguish between them), potentially making them into a threat to those they govern.
This is an extremely important context to keep in mind.
We should also keep in mind, at the risk of humoring the moonbats, that in the hands of Govt, what is considered extreme one day, can easily become routine after a number of days.
I am satisfied that our Govt did go to great lengths to minimize the possibility of such harsh measures from being irresponsibly used, and to prevent them from becoming routine, but there is one word that should be emphasized when saying that,
But.
Never forget that Govt is ruled by those with power, and it always tends towards desiring more power.
What we know was done in non-civil scenarios, in a time of war, and which we take as a vital and primary principle of that context... will be the fulcrum which those who habitually drop contexts, may someday seek to use to pry their way into civil scenarios, via spin, when they feel that their power is being threatened.
Here's a quote from George Washington that should always be kept first and foremost in mind, regarding government:
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a troublesome master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
The use and pursuit of power, impedes the operations of intelligent thought, for the most recent example, see the idiotic 'mission' of having Air Force One strafe downtown New York.
Look at the people on the ground, running in fear, thinking that 9/11 was occurring once again. This decision was made in order to get a photo-op… and their thinking and concern for possible unexpected results, for how it might affect an entire city to see a jetliner flying low towards the cityscape… well the best that can be said is that we hope the thought didn’t occur to them.
That decision is what passes for thinking by self satisfied bureaucrats, wanting to aggrandize themselves, and their superiors. Imagine what may pass for thinking when other bureaucrats, no better or worse than the ‘fool’ who signed off on that, become desperate.
And remember, the powerful will always feel that they find themselves in desperate circumstances.
That is a context that should always be of heightened concern.
If we were talking about a lone deranged individual, this could be forgiven, but we are not. We are talking about a group of fanatical, theocratic, fascist, thugs and murderers who prefer to use terrorist actions in order to impose their plans on others.
We knew they were out there.
We've known that they’ve been wanting to not just hurt us, but bring us down, for 50 years.
They were a known and gathering threat, strengthening and spreading out over the globe and publicly taking credit for attacking the west in general and America in particular, for over thirty years.
We not only did little or nothing to stop them, we did little or nothing to infiltrate them. We looked at their pitiful size and in classic hubristic mode, snickered, swore, swatted and looked away.
We unintelligently declined to put gathering intelligence on them as a low, or no, priority issue.
With that additional context in place, 9/11 happened, we were caught demonstrating our lack of intelligence (in several more ways than one) on a movement of people who had publicly declared hatred and who had repeatedly declared war upon us decades ago, and on 9/11 we suddenly realized to our own horror, that their pitiful non-aligned size, far from being an insurmountable weakness, it was in fact a huge weapon against us, and with it they could indeed hurt
Us, very, very badly.
We found ourselves in desperate circumstances, and we had no intelligent option but to resort to desperate measures to illuminate our self sustained blindness. Governments have in the past (al queda, Imperial Japan, etc), and will again, fail to realize or properly respond to real and growing threats, either out of hubris or for purely political reasons. Their failure may not only increase the danger to the nation from the original threat, but it may also put those who are governing, into a state of desperation (whether actually or politically doesn't matter, they do not distinguish between them), potentially making them into a threat to those they govern.
This is an extremely important context to keep in mind.
We should also keep in mind, at the risk of humoring the moonbats, that in the hands of Govt, what is considered extreme one day, can easily become routine after a number of days.
I am satisfied that our Govt did go to great lengths to minimize the possibility of such harsh measures from being irresponsibly used, and to prevent them from becoming routine, but there is one word that should be emphasized when saying that,
But.
Never forget that Govt is ruled by those with power, and it always tends towards desiring more power.
What we know was done in non-civil scenarios, in a time of war, and which we take as a vital and primary principle of that context... will be the fulcrum which those who habitually drop contexts, may someday seek to use to pry their way into civil scenarios, via spin, when they feel that their power is being threatened.
Here's a quote from George Washington that should always be kept first and foremost in mind, regarding government:
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a troublesome master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."
The use and pursuit of power, impedes the operations of intelligent thought, for the most recent example, see the idiotic 'mission' of having Air Force One strafe downtown New York.
Look at the people on the ground, running in fear, thinking that 9/11 was occurring once again. This decision was made in order to get a photo-op… and their thinking and concern for possible unexpected results, for how it might affect an entire city to see a jetliner flying low towards the cityscape… well the best that can be said is that we hope the thought didn’t occur to them.
That decision is what passes for thinking by self satisfied bureaucrats, wanting to aggrandize themselves, and their superiors. Imagine what may pass for thinking when other bureaucrats, no better or worse than the ‘fool’ who signed off on that, become desperate.
And remember, the powerful will always feel that they find themselves in desperate circumstances.
That is a context that should always be of heightened concern.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
The Contextualy Tortured Thoughts of Man Caused Disasters
Here's a scenario for you,
“Did you blow his head off?”,
“Well… yes, but…”,
“Sorry, no but’s, Sarge, string him up!”,
“But he broke into our house while we were sleeping! He was robbing us and trying to rape my daughter! He grabbed his gun and was pointing it…”,
“Hush you murderer! Quick Sarge, hang him so we don’t have to hear his stupid excuses, string him up!”
Keep that in mind, we'll come back to it in a few minutes.
Is the latest outrage from Washington D.C. (take your pick, releasing CIA memo’s, taking over banks, firing CEO’s… so many to choose from) merely a result of our experiencing a ‘bounce back’ from the previous administrations, which will produce a ‘bounce back’ as well? Like pinball’s in a pinball game?
Lance asked on the previous post, “I do feel and I have written this before that the election of Obama was a direct response a bounce back away from the policies of Bush and in four years there will be another bounce back the opposite way. I just hope the ball ends a little more in the middle and with a little better understanding of fiscal responsibility and the idea that if a company fails due to the nature of finance that isn't the end of the world.”
I don’t mean to criticize Lance directly, but the comment it seems to me reflects a certain view of the world that is common… and rather dangerous… all that bouncing back and forth, is not only very deterministic, but seeks to do something (required of determinism in general and leftism in particular), it seeks to drop the wider, and more relevant, context of what is happening in our lives.
For instance, by ‘bounce back’ one could mean that the uproar over the release of CIA Memo’s, could be a bounce back against demagogues such as Nancy Pelosi(D), who knowing full well about interrogation methods, and approving them – which is the only thing someone in the position of representing the people is doing when presented with information about actions to be taken, and does not speak out against it – she gave her voice, representative of all the people she represents, in at the very least non opposition, and implicit approval of those methods and actions – and then with unbounded cynical and pragmatic pandering to the most dangerously passionately uninformed among us, preyed on their stupidity in order to whip up political opposition (and power… primarily Power, for her benefit) to those who, because of secrecy, could not expose her perfidy (a little aerobic run on sentencing to get the day going).
This unhealthy, passionate, ignorance and shallow thought, which Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and John Kerry, and all the rest, preyed upon, preyed upon the weak thinking of the leftist multitudes in order to gain political power, while knowingly hindering, hurting, and opposing the interests of their country in a time of war.
I don’t need much prodding to pronounce that as being, if not legally, then morally, treasonous. But, at least in my case, I don’t regard that as ‘bouncing back’, I regard it as an open eyed examination of the issues, and with consideration, I render judgment. Bounce back… doesn’t really fit in with that process.
Do I think they really wanted to cause America harm? Did they really want to get American soldiers killed (look at what happened after the fictional Koran flushing)? No, I don’t think so, I think they merely wanted to take advantage of the situation, gain some power, I doubt they thought it’d really cause any harm, after all, responsible people would ‘do something’ to keep things going as they should. Just like with Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, they didn’t really think that their forcing banks to make unwise loans, surely those in charge would just ‘do something’ to compensate… to bounce things back in line. After all, things aren’t really integrated or dependent upon each other, what’s true for one situation isn’t necessarily true for another, all things are relative… if you chuck the context, that is.
If we do want to consider it deterministically, where does the ball bounce back to from here? If it only rebounds from one passionately uninformed position to another… what results from that? I can tell you this, it won’t be good.
I too have been alarmed over the last… lets confine it to Bush admin for brevity's sake… 8 years, but probably for other reasons than most. I was alarmed that Bush signed, rather than vetoed, McCain/Feingold, a horrible assault upon free speech and the Constitution, into law. Probably he felt he could confidently pass the buck to the Supreme Court to strike it down. I termed that, then and now, as negligence and opportunism and a betrayal of principles. It was also, for anyone who had been watching the doings of the Supreme Court, stupid.
It also has opened the door for the current administration to carefully examine dangerous right wing extremists at the DHS.
On another front, Enron was a financial calamity of poor business leadership and short sighted opportunism for quick buck payoffs, it was an example of shoddy thinking and criminal behavior – in other words, typical human failings which people in general, and investors in particular, need to be sharply on the look out for. For the people who put their life savings into a company, trusting others to look out for them and to keep them safe from incompetents and criminals and save them the burden of responsibly looking into where their life savings was put… and lost everything… they get some sympathy from me, for their condition, if not how they got there, they got what they deserved. BTW, if you trusted the Gov’t to look out for you… for the SEC to do your due diligence and thinking for you, or a broker you don’t even know beyond a phone call to put your long term interests above his commission tallies, then you got what you deserved. If you sought to escape examining the wider context of issues and requirements for security… that puts you into another context, which you cannot escape from either.
There is a risk involved in investing your money in the Stock Market, and the risk increases the more you delegate the necessary oversight to others, and exponentially so when you trust Gov’t regulations and regulators to do so for you. But their plight is not where my concerns lay, where my concerns are focused, are on egregious cases of governmental overreach into private lives and businesses, through such ‘legislation’ such as Sarbanes-Oxley. If you want to trace our falling standing in the world financial community (not speaking of our current troubles – it’s a part of it, but not a principle portion), the point where the financial capital of the world ceased to rest securely in New York, and began to float towards London and elsewhere, that heinous bill which extends governmental interference into day to day management decisions, will be found at its root.
You can’t separate the urge of politicians to “Do Something!” from the results that will result from what they do. That also is an issue of context.
Bush began many things well, then let them peter out in cancerously moderate fashion. He began by saying no to Kyoto, but gave moral courage and comfort to the global warming hucksters by granting them the status of having reasonable concerns. He began by identifying states that support terrorism as being the enemies of freedom and liberty… and then in short order, offered diplomatic dialog, fresh starts, and ‘opportunities’ to ‘join the world community’. He began by seeking to solve the immigration issue… by ignoring the context of why it is an issue, of why we have borders, and of why they are particularly important in a time of war… and by ignoring the obvious anger of the public over the issue of amnesty – ignoring existing laws - twice. That too has laid the groundwork for congress to ram its stimulus package down our nations collective throat. Bush began by seeking to end Social Security, but tried to do so on efficient grounds (“This govt backed program will be better than that because it involves profit” – yeah, good selling point to leftists), instead of qualitative moral grounds – such as it is wrong for Government to operate a Ponzi scheme, to misrepresent a transfer of wealth from those creating it now to those only consuming it, as if it were an insurance or investment program; but far more importantly, it ignores, and condones the fact, that it is wrong for Government to be involved in the private actions and finances of its citizens – it tramples upon property rights, and by extension all other rights. At that critical point in our history, perhaps the last feasible point in time, when it was possible to identify the issue in its real terms, he didn’t, and compounded it immeasurably, by destroying the free market in order to save it, or as he put it “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system”.
Very Kantian, that last… “I’ve found it necessary to destroy knowledge, in order to save faith”.
Not surprising, not at all, keeping in mind that he attended both Yale and Harvard – what can you expect?
While I obviously disapproved of most of Bush’s policies, why do I not revile the man? Because I am not a leftist. I do not make the ‘100 percentalistic’ error of the fraudulent application of principles, demanding that any deviation be devalued and destroyed. I do not make the hubristic error of assuming that because I have identified a principle involved in a situation, that I have identified all of the principles bearing on the situation. For all of Bush’s errors, and they are many, I don’t believe he intended harm to the Constitution or the Nation, and for his efforts in the ‘War on man caused disasters’ (ahem), flawed though they were, he deserves and receives, my heart felt gratitude.
But.
His comment about “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system” is sooo telling, it is consistent with (gotta laugh at that) the mixture of leftist, pragmatic, Kantianistic, slop, which is taught in our system of education. It teaches anti-conceptual, anti-contextual methods of… not of reasoning, but of calculating. And it has consequences.
This brings me to our latest bout of public turmoil over the leftists attempting to destroy our knowledge, in very Kantian fashion, in order to impose their faith - the brouhaha over ‘we don’t torture’.
It is, at its core, an attempt to destroy knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, and to substitute paper thin decrees in the place were reasoned, morally active thought, should be. Which is at the heart and deadened-soul of the left.
Thinking and applying laws and moral reasoning, requires a careful examination of context and principles, sorting and sifting away the chaff from the wheat, the mud from the gold, the relevant essentials form the irrelevant particulars. If that were not the case, we would not have, and would have no need for, Judges – it would be sufficient to write down a law, post it in the public square, and punish those who violated it. No deliberation would be needed, just:
“Did you blow his head off?”,
“Well… yes, but…”,
“Sorry, no but’s, Sarge, string him up!”,
“But he broke into our house while we were sleeping! He was robbing us and trying to rape my daughter! He grabbed his gun and was pointing it…”,
“Hush you murderer! Quick Sarge, hang him so we don’t have to hear his stupid excuses, string him up!”
Most leftists hyping the interrogations methods as torture, are quite happy with just that level of consideration. Others, having some nagging notion of there once being such a thing as morality… at one time or another… but which they’ve conveniently relativised, will ask “but what of “Thou shalt not kill”?”
Well, if you believe that that is all there is to it (leaving aside the fact that the original Hebrew was closer to ‘Thou shalt not murder’… and that they considered them to be more like the ‘Ten Categories’ of commandments, rather than stand alone commandments… and what need for the volumes and volumes of the Talmud, if ‘It is written!’ was enough?), then you are either a literalistic fundamentalist, a leftist and/or an atheist of the deterministic creed.
But you are not a Reasoning person to whom morality is truly important (‘positions’ I’m sure they have loads of, and which they’ll fervently claim to be morally righteous, but such declarations can hardly be considered moral; at best, they are political), and are unlikely to exhibit even a whiff of wisdom.
Leftists, determinist's and Kantians (which is an extended redundancy) would like to have you believe that you can have faith in ‘Kantian categorical imperative’, flat line commandments which require no context or consideration to follow, but that is only something which only the most crudely inept of computer programs can adhere to (which is btw their ideal of man), but is an evil of untold proportions to teach as being a Moral ideal.
As my scenario demonstrates above, context is not only critically important, the full context is what really actually occurred, attempting to ignore any portion of the relevant context, is to dispense with a full grasp of reality.
For instance. I got into an argument once with a relative who was proposing govt health care, and she attempted a hypothetical argument “If your neighbor had in their home, the only antidote in the world which could save your wife and children from dying from a horrible disease, and refused to sell it to you, would you break in and steal it?”
One of the chief evils of hypothetical’s, especially in the hands of professors and those who have been distorted by them (as she was), is that they are usually used in an attempt to dispense with reality. They attempt to discard all context, all that is real and true, lock you into their one dimensional scenario, and then try to apply your deeply dimensional concepts (in this case Property Rights) to their little hell, in such a fashion as to make you discard your ability to reason – which is what you do when you ignore contextual issues. Like trying to shove a package through a mail slot, it won’t work, one or the other will be destroyed in the process, and they are banking on it being your package of contexts, rather than their narrow slot in the wall of flatland views, which will break.
In her hypothetical, she attempted to dispense with everything which would have made the development and attainment of some precious antidote possible in the first place: Reason, Medical Science, a Pharmaceutical industry, peaceful law abiding neighborhoods with homes that are not and do not need to be surrounded with defensive moats, and a free market which would make all of that possible – all of which is dependent upon a lawful defense of property rights, she attempted to discard that entire deeply contextual and integrated world view - in favor of a scenario of the basest of lifeboat ethics, a situation which requires immediate action and where reasoned thought and debate is not possible – a situation antithetical to ethical consideration and thought – and in that flattened context of nightmarish impossibilities which would still be dependent upon property rights in order to even conceive of, she attempts to force me to ‘admit’ that property rights are of no real value in the real world.
Again, the context matters, in most normal situations, a simple reference will suffice, you don’t steal, someone who doesn’t, gets punished.
Truth be told, most libertarians (of the Murray Rothbard variety) fall into this same trap, when they declare that all taxation is theft, that the government can have no right to their money. But just as my relative sought to construct a hypothetical which required property rights to exist, in order to attack them, the anarcho-libertarians attempt to use the concept of rights, which are reliant upon a proper government to uphold and defend them, in order to attack government for violating them. But you can have no political right to weaken or do away with that which makes political rights possible (more on this when I get to the end of my posts on Justice).
Where was this ramble rambling towards… oh yes, in the context of a group of fanatically violent theocratic anarchists, who are waging the most savage and uncivilized of wars upon the west in general, and upon America in particular, and having just slaughtered 3,000 civilians engaged in no aggressive behavior towards them, and planning more such attacks; in that context one of the creatures was captured, and with a sizable amount of evidence to indicate this filth bucket had information which might help prevent another imminent and horrific attack upon our people, into that context the aclu-Pelosi generated moonbat leftists wanted to uphold and defend the man-caused-disaster-generators right to constitutional privileges, and conventional legal respects and regards due to any other civilized person.
That’s a huge load of context dropping.
On top of that, the leftists want to ignore or discount the extensive measures that our government took, carefully examining legal obligations and treaties and constitutional law, in order to discern whether or not we could interrogate such a terrorist with a degree of roughness which would be unthinkable in normal situations. They want to ignore the limitations and restraints the Bush Administration determined would be necessary for that creatures ‘rights’ and safety, in order to remain within our law, and which would require the President of the United States of America to individually authorize particular instances which required the use of those methods. They also want to ignore the huge outcry and debate which has been raised among We The People once we heard what was happening – they want to ignore all of this – drop all of the relevant context – in order to draw an equivalence between the monstrous actions which are eagerly indulged in by the islambies (and I might mention, by many of those ‘appalled’ world leaders so loudly criticizing our actions, who routinely indulge in as much by their local police dept’s, not to mention what their secret police do to their own people, at their own discretion and pleasure… China anybody? Russia? FRANCE? )… is … just… asstounding.
And Horrifying.
And it is all the inevitable result of a pervasive leftist philosophy which rests upon, and depends upon, the discarding of context which such things as Kantian categorical imperative require.
They, and the left in general, are fundamentally anti-conceptual, anti-reason, and anti-American.
Period (contextually speaking).
“Did you blow his head off?”,
“Well… yes, but…”,
“Sorry, no but’s, Sarge, string him up!”,
“But he broke into our house while we were sleeping! He was robbing us and trying to rape my daughter! He grabbed his gun and was pointing it…”,
“Hush you murderer! Quick Sarge, hang him so we don’t have to hear his stupid excuses, string him up!”
Keep that in mind, we'll come back to it in a few minutes.
Is the latest outrage from Washington D.C. (take your pick, releasing CIA memo’s, taking over banks, firing CEO’s… so many to choose from) merely a result of our experiencing a ‘bounce back’ from the previous administrations, which will produce a ‘bounce back’ as well? Like pinball’s in a pinball game?
Lance asked on the previous post, “I do feel and I have written this before that the election of Obama was a direct response a bounce back away from the policies of Bush and in four years there will be another bounce back the opposite way. I just hope the ball ends a little more in the middle and with a little better understanding of fiscal responsibility and the idea that if a company fails due to the nature of finance that isn't the end of the world.”
I don’t mean to criticize Lance directly, but the comment it seems to me reflects a certain view of the world that is common… and rather dangerous… all that bouncing back and forth, is not only very deterministic, but seeks to do something (required of determinism in general and leftism in particular), it seeks to drop the wider, and more relevant, context of what is happening in our lives.
For instance, by ‘bounce back’ one could mean that the uproar over the release of CIA Memo’s, could be a bounce back against demagogues such as Nancy Pelosi(D), who knowing full well about interrogation methods, and approving them – which is the only thing someone in the position of representing the people is doing when presented with information about actions to be taken, and does not speak out against it – she gave her voice, representative of all the people she represents, in at the very least non opposition, and implicit approval of those methods and actions – and then with unbounded cynical and pragmatic pandering to the most dangerously passionately uninformed among us, preyed on their stupidity in order to whip up political opposition (and power… primarily Power, for her benefit) to those who, because of secrecy, could not expose her perfidy (a little aerobic run on sentencing to get the day going).
This unhealthy, passionate, ignorance and shallow thought, which Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, and John Kerry, and all the rest, preyed upon, preyed upon the weak thinking of the leftist multitudes in order to gain political power, while knowingly hindering, hurting, and opposing the interests of their country in a time of war.
I don’t need much prodding to pronounce that as being, if not legally, then morally, treasonous. But, at least in my case, I don’t regard that as ‘bouncing back’, I regard it as an open eyed examination of the issues, and with consideration, I render judgment. Bounce back… doesn’t really fit in with that process.
Do I think they really wanted to cause America harm? Did they really want to get American soldiers killed (look at what happened after the fictional Koran flushing)? No, I don’t think so, I think they merely wanted to take advantage of the situation, gain some power, I doubt they thought it’d really cause any harm, after all, responsible people would ‘do something’ to keep things going as they should. Just like with Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, they didn’t really think that their forcing banks to make unwise loans, surely those in charge would just ‘do something’ to compensate… to bounce things back in line. After all, things aren’t really integrated or dependent upon each other, what’s true for one situation isn’t necessarily true for another, all things are relative… if you chuck the context, that is.
If we do want to consider it deterministically, where does the ball bounce back to from here? If it only rebounds from one passionately uninformed position to another… what results from that? I can tell you this, it won’t be good.
I too have been alarmed over the last… lets confine it to Bush admin for brevity's sake… 8 years, but probably for other reasons than most. I was alarmed that Bush signed, rather than vetoed, McCain/Feingold, a horrible assault upon free speech and the Constitution, into law. Probably he felt he could confidently pass the buck to the Supreme Court to strike it down. I termed that, then and now, as negligence and opportunism and a betrayal of principles. It was also, for anyone who had been watching the doings of the Supreme Court, stupid.
It also has opened the door for the current administration to carefully examine dangerous right wing extremists at the DHS.
On another front, Enron was a financial calamity of poor business leadership and short sighted opportunism for quick buck payoffs, it was an example of shoddy thinking and criminal behavior – in other words, typical human failings which people in general, and investors in particular, need to be sharply on the look out for. For the people who put their life savings into a company, trusting others to look out for them and to keep them safe from incompetents and criminals and save them the burden of responsibly looking into where their life savings was put… and lost everything… they get some sympathy from me, for their condition, if not how they got there, they got what they deserved. BTW, if you trusted the Gov’t to look out for you… for the SEC to do your due diligence and thinking for you, or a broker you don’t even know beyond a phone call to put your long term interests above his commission tallies, then you got what you deserved. If you sought to escape examining the wider context of issues and requirements for security… that puts you into another context, which you cannot escape from either.
There is a risk involved in investing your money in the Stock Market, and the risk increases the more you delegate the necessary oversight to others, and exponentially so when you trust Gov’t regulations and regulators to do so for you. But their plight is not where my concerns lay, where my concerns are focused, are on egregious cases of governmental overreach into private lives and businesses, through such ‘legislation’ such as Sarbanes-Oxley. If you want to trace our falling standing in the world financial community (not speaking of our current troubles – it’s a part of it, but not a principle portion), the point where the financial capital of the world ceased to rest securely in New York, and began to float towards London and elsewhere, that heinous bill which extends governmental interference into day to day management decisions, will be found at its root.
You can’t separate the urge of politicians to “Do Something!” from the results that will result from what they do. That also is an issue of context.
Bush began many things well, then let them peter out in cancerously moderate fashion. He began by saying no to Kyoto, but gave moral courage and comfort to the global warming hucksters by granting them the status of having reasonable concerns. He began by identifying states that support terrorism as being the enemies of freedom and liberty… and then in short order, offered diplomatic dialog, fresh starts, and ‘opportunities’ to ‘join the world community’. He began by seeking to solve the immigration issue… by ignoring the context of why it is an issue, of why we have borders, and of why they are particularly important in a time of war… and by ignoring the obvious anger of the public over the issue of amnesty – ignoring existing laws - twice. That too has laid the groundwork for congress to ram its stimulus package down our nations collective throat. Bush began by seeking to end Social Security, but tried to do so on efficient grounds (“This govt backed program will be better than that because it involves profit” – yeah, good selling point to leftists), instead of qualitative moral grounds – such as it is wrong for Government to operate a Ponzi scheme, to misrepresent a transfer of wealth from those creating it now to those only consuming it, as if it were an insurance or investment program; but far more importantly, it ignores, and condones the fact, that it is wrong for Government to be involved in the private actions and finances of its citizens – it tramples upon property rights, and by extension all other rights. At that critical point in our history, perhaps the last feasible point in time, when it was possible to identify the issue in its real terms, he didn’t, and compounded it immeasurably, by destroying the free market in order to save it, or as he put it “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system”.
Very Kantian, that last… “I’ve found it necessary to destroy knowledge, in order to save faith”.
Not surprising, not at all, keeping in mind that he attended both Yale and Harvard – what can you expect?
While I obviously disapproved of most of Bush’s policies, why do I not revile the man? Because I am not a leftist. I do not make the ‘100 percentalistic’ error of the fraudulent application of principles, demanding that any deviation be devalued and destroyed. I do not make the hubristic error of assuming that because I have identified a principle involved in a situation, that I have identified all of the principles bearing on the situation. For all of Bush’s errors, and they are many, I don’t believe he intended harm to the Constitution or the Nation, and for his efforts in the ‘War on man caused disasters’ (ahem), flawed though they were, he deserves and receives, my heart felt gratitude.
But.
His comment about “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system” is sooo telling, it is consistent with (gotta laugh at that) the mixture of leftist, pragmatic, Kantianistic, slop, which is taught in our system of education. It teaches anti-conceptual, anti-contextual methods of… not of reasoning, but of calculating. And it has consequences.
This brings me to our latest bout of public turmoil over the leftists attempting to destroy our knowledge, in very Kantian fashion, in order to impose their faith - the brouhaha over ‘we don’t torture’.
It is, at its core, an attempt to destroy knowledge of what is right and what is wrong, and to substitute paper thin decrees in the place were reasoned, morally active thought, should be. Which is at the heart and deadened-soul of the left.
Thinking and applying laws and moral reasoning, requires a careful examination of context and principles, sorting and sifting away the chaff from the wheat, the mud from the gold, the relevant essentials form the irrelevant particulars. If that were not the case, we would not have, and would have no need for, Judges – it would be sufficient to write down a law, post it in the public square, and punish those who violated it. No deliberation would be needed, just:
“Did you blow his head off?”,
“Well… yes, but…”,
“Sorry, no but’s, Sarge, string him up!”,
“But he broke into our house while we were sleeping! He was robbing us and trying to rape my daughter! He grabbed his gun and was pointing it…”,
“Hush you murderer! Quick Sarge, hang him so we don’t have to hear his stupid excuses, string him up!”
Most leftists hyping the interrogations methods as torture, are quite happy with just that level of consideration. Others, having some nagging notion of there once being such a thing as morality… at one time or another… but which they’ve conveniently relativised, will ask “but what of “Thou shalt not kill”?”
Well, if you believe that that is all there is to it (leaving aside the fact that the original Hebrew was closer to ‘Thou shalt not murder’… and that they considered them to be more like the ‘Ten Categories’ of commandments, rather than stand alone commandments… and what need for the volumes and volumes of the Talmud, if ‘It is written!’ was enough?), then you are either a literalistic fundamentalist, a leftist and/or an atheist of the deterministic creed.
But you are not a Reasoning person to whom morality is truly important (‘positions’ I’m sure they have loads of, and which they’ll fervently claim to be morally righteous, but such declarations can hardly be considered moral; at best, they are political), and are unlikely to exhibit even a whiff of wisdom.
Leftists, determinist's and Kantians (which is an extended redundancy) would like to have you believe that you can have faith in ‘Kantian categorical imperative’, flat line commandments which require no context or consideration to follow, but that is only something which only the most crudely inept of computer programs can adhere to (which is btw their ideal of man), but is an evil of untold proportions to teach as being a Moral ideal.
As my scenario demonstrates above, context is not only critically important, the full context is what really actually occurred, attempting to ignore any portion of the relevant context, is to dispense with a full grasp of reality.
For instance. I got into an argument once with a relative who was proposing govt health care, and she attempted a hypothetical argument “If your neighbor had in their home, the only antidote in the world which could save your wife and children from dying from a horrible disease, and refused to sell it to you, would you break in and steal it?”
One of the chief evils of hypothetical’s, especially in the hands of professors and those who have been distorted by them (as she was), is that they are usually used in an attempt to dispense with reality. They attempt to discard all context, all that is real and true, lock you into their one dimensional scenario, and then try to apply your deeply dimensional concepts (in this case Property Rights) to their little hell, in such a fashion as to make you discard your ability to reason – which is what you do when you ignore contextual issues. Like trying to shove a package through a mail slot, it won’t work, one or the other will be destroyed in the process, and they are banking on it being your package of contexts, rather than their narrow slot in the wall of flatland views, which will break.
In her hypothetical, she attempted to dispense with everything which would have made the development and attainment of some precious antidote possible in the first place: Reason, Medical Science, a Pharmaceutical industry, peaceful law abiding neighborhoods with homes that are not and do not need to be surrounded with defensive moats, and a free market which would make all of that possible – all of which is dependent upon a lawful defense of property rights, she attempted to discard that entire deeply contextual and integrated world view - in favor of a scenario of the basest of lifeboat ethics, a situation which requires immediate action and where reasoned thought and debate is not possible – a situation antithetical to ethical consideration and thought – and in that flattened context of nightmarish impossibilities which would still be dependent upon property rights in order to even conceive of, she attempts to force me to ‘admit’ that property rights are of no real value in the real world.
Again, the context matters, in most normal situations, a simple reference will suffice, you don’t steal, someone who doesn’t, gets punished.
Truth be told, most libertarians (of the Murray Rothbard variety) fall into this same trap, when they declare that all taxation is theft, that the government can have no right to their money. But just as my relative sought to construct a hypothetical which required property rights to exist, in order to attack them, the anarcho-libertarians attempt to use the concept of rights, which are reliant upon a proper government to uphold and defend them, in order to attack government for violating them. But you can have no political right to weaken or do away with that which makes political rights possible (more on this when I get to the end of my posts on Justice).
Where was this ramble rambling towards… oh yes, in the context of a group of fanatically violent theocratic anarchists, who are waging the most savage and uncivilized of wars upon the west in general, and upon America in particular, and having just slaughtered 3,000 civilians engaged in no aggressive behavior towards them, and planning more such attacks; in that context one of the creatures was captured, and with a sizable amount of evidence to indicate this filth bucket had information which might help prevent another imminent and horrific attack upon our people, into that context the aclu-Pelosi generated moonbat leftists wanted to uphold and defend the man-caused-disaster-generators right to constitutional privileges, and conventional legal respects and regards due to any other civilized person.
That’s a huge load of context dropping.
On top of that, the leftists want to ignore or discount the extensive measures that our government took, carefully examining legal obligations and treaties and constitutional law, in order to discern whether or not we could interrogate such a terrorist with a degree of roughness which would be unthinkable in normal situations. They want to ignore the limitations and restraints the Bush Administration determined would be necessary for that creatures ‘rights’ and safety, in order to remain within our law, and which would require the President of the United States of America to individually authorize particular instances which required the use of those methods. They also want to ignore the huge outcry and debate which has been raised among We The People once we heard what was happening – they want to ignore all of this – drop all of the relevant context – in order to draw an equivalence between the monstrous actions which are eagerly indulged in by the islambies (and I might mention, by many of those ‘appalled’ world leaders so loudly criticizing our actions, who routinely indulge in as much by their local police dept’s, not to mention what their secret police do to their own people, at their own discretion and pleasure… China anybody? Russia? FRANCE? )… is … just… asstounding.
And Horrifying.
And it is all the inevitable result of a pervasive leftist philosophy which rests upon, and depends upon, the discarding of context which such things as Kantian categorical imperative require.
They, and the left in general, are fundamentally anti-conceptual, anti-reason, and anti-American.
Period (contextually speaking).
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Post Tea Party Talk
Ok, now that the Tea Parties have kicked things off… it’s time to reflect upon just what it is that we are working on kicking off.
Hopefully we’re not just blowing off steam.
I think I’ll have to continue this in the next couple posts, but for now, in taking an assessment of ourselves, and what we are fighting against, it might be instructive to take a look at how we are characterized by those whom we are opposed by, for it can tell us much about not only how they perceive the world, and us, but how common notions many of us may hold, have been poisoning us for decades.
Hopefully we’re not just blowing off steam.
I think I’ll have to continue this in the next couple posts, but for now, in taking an assessment of ourselves, and what we are fighting against, it might be instructive to take a look at how we are characterized by those whom we are opposed by, for it can tell us much about not only how they perceive the world, and us, but how common notions many of us may hold, have been poisoning us for decades.
“It’s funded by right wing billionaires”, “They are being organized by the GOP”, “They are right wing extremist hate mongers in league with the GOP”
It's worth taking a closer look at that, for there is much there to be seen.
- They do not believe that anything could happen nationwide, without it being coordinated, instigated, and funded, by a central power from above.
- They do not believe that individuals nationwide would see issues of principle which concerned them, and choose to take action to resolve them.
- They do not believe that normal individuals would contribute their time and money without an immediate and direct payoff for them.
Take a long slow look at these beliefs, which of course can be heard and verified on CNN, NBC, New York Times, Democrat Party, etc, and demonstrated so well by this CNNette, they describe exactly what they think of us, and why. The underlying beliefs behind these assumptions, are consistent with the core philosophy of Proreregressives, and indicates why they think along Marxist, Socialist and Fascist lines, and why they are necessarily in concerted opposition to Individual Rights, to Property Rights, and to the Free Market, as they are.
The Free Market is based upon the understanding, that Individuals making decisions in the course of their own lives and businesses, will result in a highly productive, prosperous and efficient economy, and will do so not only without experts advising and ordering their actions, but BECAUSE there are not ‘experts’ advising them from on high, but BECAUSE they are not giving them step by step orders countermanding their own best judgments, the Free Market is so productive BECAUSE individuals are free to use their own minds and make decisions about their own interests, in their own lives, for their own purposes.
They do not believe in the Free Market, because they do not believe in the ability or advisability of allowing individuals to use their own minds to live their own lives!
These people who opposed our Tea Parties, mostly leftists of course, but many on the ‘right’ as well, do not believe that individuals can be expected to do anything in any significant numbers, or to accomplish anything, without being organized and guided by experts, and they do not believe that society can prosper and progress without the directions of experts in positions of power organizing society in accordance with ‘rational’ plans. And they really cannot believe that we would bother to rouse ourselves to fight for principles which might materially benefit “the rich”, more so than ourselves.
This cannot be said enough – it is core to the fight we are facing -
The Free Market is based upon the understanding, that Individuals making decisions in the course of their own lives and businesses, will result in a highly productive, prosperous and efficient economy, and will do so not only without experts advising and ordering their actions, but BECAUSE there are not ‘experts’ advising them from on high, but BECAUSE they are not giving them step by step orders countermanding their own best judgments, the Free Market is so productive BECAUSE individuals are free to use their own minds and make decisions about their own interests, in their own lives, for their own purposes.
They do not believe in the Free Market, because they do not believe in the ability or advisability of allowing individuals to use their own minds to live their own lives!
These people who opposed our Tea Parties, mostly leftists of course, but many on the ‘right’ as well, do not believe that individuals can be expected to do anything in any significant numbers, or to accomplish anything, without being organized and guided by experts, and they do not believe that society can prosper and progress without the directions of experts in positions of power organizing society in accordance with ‘rational’ plans. And they really cannot believe that we would bother to rouse ourselves to fight for principles which might materially benefit “the rich”, more so than ourselves.
This cannot be said enough – it is core to the fight we are facing -
- They Do Not Believe in Individual Rights, they believe instead in power and coercion, and that it is perfectly appropriate to use power and coercion to force individuals to serve their estimation of “the greater good”.
- They do not believe in your ability to live your life in a way that meets their ‘expert’ expectations, and in any conflict between the two, they believe that their expert expectations trump yours.
- They believe that your decisions will damage how they have determined it would be best for you to live.
- They do not believe in Free Will.
- They oppose the United States Constitution because it complicates their ability to do to you what THEY have decided is best for you.
- They believe that experts in the government should control and organize society as only they are equipped to determine it should be.
Who are ‘They’?
They are 'progressives', they are statists, and they are found on the Left AND the Right, and in every fundamental principle and issue the progressives in the Democrat AND Republican party, ARE Anti-American.
Some of the changes which the Proregressives have imposed upon this nation, and imperiled our liberty through, are:
They are 'progressives', they are statists, and they are found on the Left AND the Right, and in every fundamental principle and issue the progressives in the Democrat AND Republican party, ARE Anti-American.
Some of the changes which the Proregressives have imposed upon this nation, and imperiled our liberty through, are:
- Mandatory public schooling using government approved curriculum taught by teachers certified through government approved colleges
- The FED, which gives the government control over the lifeblood of our economy
- The FDA, SEC, EPA and a myriad other alphabet agencies of unelected bureaucrats, with no defined terms, writing regulations over our lives and businesses, which have the force of law
- The soft slavery of the Income Tax through the 16th amendment, through which the government has first claim to all that you earn, and only through its generosity, are you allowed to retain whatever percentage of income it sees fit to dole back to you, or as Walter E. Williams once defined slavery: as “…a set of circumstances whereby one person is forcibly used to serve the purposes of another person and has no legal claim to the fruits of his labor” – if you don’t think that describes your circumstance, I’d like to hear how and why not
- The corruption of the Senate through the 17th amendment, which reduced the Senate from a deliberative body thrice removed from the heat of the demos – who the Representatives are representatives of, and who the Senate was designed to cool and balance - to nothing but a simmering body tied directly to the ups and downs of public opinion, but with a guaranteed triple term – the Founders worst nightmare.
- Devaluing and destabilizing our money through abandoning the Gold Standard, giving government to ability to change the value of paper money to suit their purposes, at our expense
- A constant and continual attack upon property rights, because all of your rights depend upon an inviolate defense of property rights – and an oppressive government is almost inconceivable without gaining control over that which all of your material well being rests upon - your property
Do not make the mistake of thinking these Tea Parties are about the amount of money being taxed - This is NOT a tax revolt, any more than it was for the generation of our Founding Fathers. This is an issue of whether individuals should be secure in their property and so free to live their lives in liberty and in the pursuit of happiness, or whether Government should have first claim to their property, in order to set the boundaries of their lives, distributing favors and benefits as needed, to keep them in order and happy.
The Tea Party revolt is about whether the government serves you, or whether you serve the government.
In 1773 our Founding Father’s – YOUR Founding Fathers, whether your family have been citizens here for over two centuries or two months – YOUR Founding Fathers came to the most radical of political decisions ever proposed, that Individuals had minds and souls of their own, and that they should have the liberty to exercise them in their pursuit of happiness, and that no one had the right to rob them of the rights necessary to those ends.
The Tea Party revolt is about whether the government serves you, or whether you serve the government.
In 1773 our Founding Father’s – YOUR Founding Fathers, whether your family have been citizens here for over two centuries or two months – YOUR Founding Fathers came to the most radical of political decisions ever proposed, that Individuals had minds and souls of their own, and that they should have the liberty to exercise them in their pursuit of happiness, and that no one had the right to rob them of the rights necessary to those ends.
In 1787, those Founding Fathers, sobered by revolution and the specter of political dissolution and potential tyrannies, created the first moral government in the history of the world, one which upheld Individuals Rights to use their own minds to live their lives, free from the dictates of tyrants.
It has come to us to reaffirm those founding principles, and stake our claim to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
It has come to us to reaffirm those founding principles, and stake our claim to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
What I saw at the Tea Party
A fine time was had this evening in the Show Me state. 8,000 to 10,000 Missourians came together to ask for someone to show me where in the U.S. Constitution it says that our Govt can,
take all our money,
... and our grandkid's money
... and print even more,
... and nationalize our industries,
... and even penalize particular executives or fire others!
Just a couple pictures for now, and off to bed,
Thanks to Bill Hennesy at St. Louis Tea Party.com as his fellow organizer Dana Loesch from 97.1 FM (great speech btw) and Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit, and Kevin Jackson at the Black Sphere for MC'ing and all for organizing and pulling this off ... and without the 'benefit' of national personalities or politicians. 8,000 to 10,000 ain't a bad tally for a couple local bloggers!
Awfully darn good to see level headed, polite, informed people gathering together to support the Constitution which protects our freedoms and supports the Republic which makes our liberty possible.
While this is just a start, and will require much follow through, not to mention actual plans... it is still an excellent start... and nationwide!
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tea Party in Support of P.E.T.A! (People for the Ethical Taxation of Americans)
A repost from 2007, when I was incensed over Bush's, now seemingly quaint, $2.9 Trillion dollar budget, seems timely to review... with a couple new pic's for us right wing extremists who are loony enough to think that the Constitution is our cup of Tea , and that it actually meant, and means, something very, very exceptional in the history of mankind.
231 years ago, the leaders of America agreed upon a declaration of their principles in order to officially recognize and universalize their scattered actions into one common cause. Those scattered actions of Samuel Adams exhortations, the Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere & Lexington/Concord, Patrick Henry's '...but as for me, give me Liberty - or give me death.", Bunker Hill, all of these came together, 'From out of many, One' as a principled stand against tyranny, and for ... what?
What were these scattered words and actions, what were their purposes whose motivating principles unifying could be unified under Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence?
The smart set (meaning self-stupid-ifying ideological proregressives) would have us believe that it was for taxes (ostensibly), but even more so to further line the pockets of rich merchants and slave owners - and to a majority of the Signers, they could point to the facts of their lives and situations as support for their sophistry.
As is the case with most facts stripped from context and principle - they Lie. Most foully, they do lie.
The American colonies were settled by people seeking to live their own lives as they saw fit. I won't say they sought religious freedom, for as with the Puritans (who came later), at best they originally sought the freedom to impose their own religious tyranny. The Virginians (who were here first) came for gold and adventure. All of them found Reality. Stark and unbuffered by established traditions and aristocracies. Here in the wilds of America, they found only primitive savages, wilderness and need.
Those conditions, coupled with the mother country of England being distracted by continental concerns, left the colonists free to discover the razor of reality - what is false and useless, must be discarded. What is Good and True, and that most rare of things in a colony - the Beautiful, must be valued, guarded and promoted. The cream of western civilization was taught to their children, the classics & the Bible, and the new English/Scottish philosophers.
Slowly over the next 150 years, these conditions formed a hardy people. A people one part civilized and one part wild. That one part civilized, was civilized mainly by way of those virtues and ideals which didn't conflict with the one part that was wild. They didn't necessarily know what they knew, but beneath the knowledge they did have, through lessons of daily conduct, they learned the lessons of character formed of realities razor, through which they knew true Freedom.
That knowledge of freedom knew the folly of license, just as the Aesop’s ants knew that the foolish grasshopper would soon become their food. They had the lessons of civilization, knew of the necessity of Law, as only those who are confronted with the spectacle of savages and unvarnished reality can know it. They had distant memories of the best and worst possible in the rumors of civilization far away, and held the best of them as something to aim towards. They had a Goal - to survive and prosper, and they had the clear parameters of savagery or desolation to guide them. The Puritans early experiment with communism taught them all the harsh lessons of the feebleness of collective authority and 'ownership' of property, over the community of Individuals secure in their rights of Property, working individually together in community.
These lessons were learned and known in their spirit and conduct, even if they didn't know it in written understanding. They knew the True Freedom of freedom boundaried by reality and law. And they knew what it meant to stray from them.
Into this world 150 years in the learning and making, the attentions of the mother country, and of Europe, returned to them. They fought the French and Indian war with and for the British. And then the British sought to have them help to pay for it. For the European, insulated from the follies of bad economics and tyranny by millennia of established traditions, they thought nothing of their impositions.
Through the lessons of dealing with the Indians, and the wilderness, the colonists knew in their bones, the folly of forcefully trampling upon the sacred rights of property, of thinking that laws issued against the tide would stop it, immediately had their backs up. They couldn't well say what they didn't like about it, but they knew something was seriously wrong.
Into that void of being able to put into words what they all understood, came James Otis, Samuel Adams, John Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren. And they were soon followed by John Hancock, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and so many others, all of whom form the body of the Founding Fathers. They put into words and deeds what they all already knew, that proper, civilized men dealt with their fellows ethically, or not at all.
Those who chose to act unethically, to act against Nature and Natures God, against Reality, was either a savage or a tyrant - and both unworthy of respect. Worthy only of defiance, and defying a European Tyrant entailed the use of cold steel and the risking of your life and your sacred honor.
Into that understanding, Thomas Jefferson, at the request of a committee of the best of the Colonists, put that understanding into the immortal words of the Declaration of Independence.
Review the sacred document well, and you will find it to be a declaration of and by Patriots for the Ethical Taxation of Americans, ethics which they knew and understood, learned deeply and well through the school of the Good, the Beautiful and the True - of Reality, and the Spirit which runs through it.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.THE UNANIMOUSDECLARATION OF THE
THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.
THE UNANIMOUS
DECLARATION OF THE THIRTEEN UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
WHEN, in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's GOD entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the Causes which impel them to the Separation.
We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their CREATOR, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that Governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
HE has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
HE has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
HE has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyranny only.
HE has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
HE has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
HE has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the mean Time, exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
HE has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
HE has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
HE has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
HE has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
HE has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our Legislatures.
HE has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
HE has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
FOR quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
FOR protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
FOR cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
FOR imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
FOR transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended Offences:
FOR abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
FOR suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
HE has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection, and waging War against us.
HE has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
HE is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny, already begun with Circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Nation.
HE has constrained our Fellow-Citizens, taken Captive on the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their Friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
HE has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes, and Conditions.
IN every Stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every Act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
NOR have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them, from Time to Time, of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable Jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native Justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our Connexions and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the Rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
WE, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in GENERAL CONGRESS Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of Right do. And for the Support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of DIVINE PROVIDENCE, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honour.
John Hancock.
GEORGIA, Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, Geo. Walton.
NORTH-CAROLINA, Wm. Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn.
SOUTH-CAROLINA, Edward Rutledge, Thos Heyward, junr. Thomas Lynch, junr. Arthur Middleton.
MARYLAND, Samuel Chase, Wm. Paca, Thos. Stone, Charles Carroll, of Carrollton.
VIRGINIA, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Ths. Jefferson, Benja. Harrison, Thos. Nelson, jr. Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton.
PENNSYLVANIA, Robt. Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benja. Franklin, John Morton, Geo. Clymer, Jas. Smith, Geo. Taylor, James Wilson, Geo. Ross.
DELAWARE, Caesar Rodney, Geo. Read.
NEW-YORK, Wm. Floyd, Phil. Livingston, Frank Lewis, Lewis Morris.
NEW-JERSEY, Richd. Stockton, Jno. Witherspoon, Fras. Hopkinson, John Hart, Abra. Clark.
NEW-HAMPSHIRE, Josiah Bartlett, Wm. Whipple, Matthew Thornton.
MASSACHUSETTS-BAY, Saml. Adams, John Adams, Robt. Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry.
RHODE-ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE, &c. Step. Hopkins, William Ellery.
CONNECTICUT, Roger Sherman, Saml. Huntington, Wm. Williams, Oliver Wolcott.
IN CONGRESS, JANUARY 18, 1777.
ORDERED,
THAT an authenticated Copy of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCY, with the Names of the MEMBERS of CONGRESS, subscribing the same, be sent to each of the UNITED STATES, and that they be desired to have the same put on RECORD.
By Order of CONGRESS,
JOHN HANCOCK, President.
The various HE’s and For’s may have changed between then and now, but the principles remain the same, and the necessity of defiance should be apparent to us now, just as it was to us then. Thankfully, today there is no need in this land for the use of cold steel against the tyrants among us and in our capitals, but the need to defy tyrants, to put into words the usurpations and offenses, and the statement of Principled words for what we all know and understand – remains very much the same.
Perhaps the recent amnesty bill will stir us again to defy tyrants, perhaps more is needed – we shall seek to keep the need alive and clarified.
Long live the Spirit of 1776.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Of Easter, Pirates, Seals, Kites and Tea Parties
Today is Easter Sunday, and though the day certainly needs no further elaboration from me, still I wonder how much thought we give to how we celebrate the Dei here, as opposed to around the world... and in the rest of our lives.We enjoyed a pleasant family day here, and although chilly (darn that global warming), we were able to get some good kite flying in as well.
"... is risen!"
Across the world, three pirates met their John Wayne style Hollywood endings at the hands of U.S. Navy Seals, freeing one very brave American sea captain. I don't know about you, but I draw a clear line between my daughter dashing across a field with her kite dancing up into the air, and our killing pirates in particular and standing up to bad guys in general.
Neglect the later, and imperil the former.
For the good to prevail, they must stand up to and stop the bad - the hesitancy or failure of the good to do so, is the only strength the bad has. Hat's off to President Obama for signing the order to take them out. How about following the same policy elsewhere around the world... and here at home as well?
As Easter signifies the path towards the souls ascent, it requires focusing upon the truth on high, and practicing it in your behavior here on the ground, and so the kite climbs upwards due to both the gusting breeze and the kite's line held in a little girls hand running across the ground. A society which has the leisure to observe all they hold holy, and safely gather their family together via planes, trains and automobiles for a feast made possible through supermarkets and businesses in a free market; is a society which relies upon their observation, respect, and defense of law.
Law and Order requires written laws, clearly defined and vigorously enforced, and above all, it requires that those in authority recognize and respect the law, and that they dare not evade or abuse it.
That requires that the people remind those in authority when we know that they have strayed; we must stand up and remind them that it was the people who put them in those positions, and we put them in those positions in order to uphold the law, not to use it and abuse it for their own purposes.
It's not the answer, but it is the path towards One - make yourself heard at a Tea Party - stand up, remind those in power, that We The People put them there, and that we intend to hold them to accounts.
Happy Easter!
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Tea and Trumpets
Shortly after communicating much of what has made up my previous couple of posts, to both of our Senators and our Representative, I received an email from one of my Senator's, Sen. Claire McCaskill (you may remember some of her many glowing appearances during the previous presidential campaign, arguing for the wonderful middle class tax-cuts and fiscal responsibility which Mr. Obama would bring to Washington, should he be elected President), her message says:
Wasn't that thoughtful? Well, to be fair, at least she did send some kind of reply... although I somehow doubt that my message prompted her statewide email and travel plans, still, our Representative, Rep. Akin only sent: "Thank you for contacting my office", and our rino Sen. Bond? Zip.
Still, one good reply deserves another, so I replied with the following:
Senator,
Thanks for your invitation to chat during normal working hours on 4/7/09.
Unfortunately, although I’ve been out of work for three months, darn the luck, I am starting a new job on 4/6/09… I’m tempted to request a later start date so that I can attend your ‘Kitchen Table Talk’ in order to try and explain to you what most American’s do during their ‘Kitchen Table Talk’s. Typically, we sit down, usually without much of a sense of ‘excitement’, and try to figure out how much money we actually have, how much money is actually coming in, and then begin budgeting (that usually means cutting back on things we’d like to have and do) in order to try to make ends meet.
Perhaps you could pass that strategy on to your fellow’s?
I also wonder that you seem to invariably schedule these quaint get-togethers when most people, who are fortunate enough to have a job, will actually be at their jobs – I wonder if that is the point?
Here’s an idea, if you happen to be in town on April 15th (a day that figures big in our budgeting), maybe you’d like to drop by for a get-together and some Tea, which a few thousand of us are planning… I’m sure you’ll hear loads about what Missourians think of your ‘many exciting opportunities’.
Sincerely,
Van
"Right now, as our nation faces its most serious economic crisis in decades, Congress and the President worked together in order to pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). This recovery package will energize and uplift our state’s economy, and I want to talk to you about the many exciting opportunities for Missourians: thousands of jobs for our state, improvements to our infrastructure, much needed aid for small businesses, help for our schools and neighborhoods, and assistance for homeowners, to name a few.
That’s why I will be hosting a Kitchen Table Talk in your area on
Tuesday, April 7, 2009:St. Charles County (9:00 AM – 10:00 AM)"
Wasn't that thoughtful? Well, to be fair, at least she did send some kind of reply... although I somehow doubt that my message prompted her statewide email and travel plans, still, our Representative, Rep. Akin only sent: "Thank you for contacting my office", and our rino Sen. Bond? Zip.
Still, one good reply deserves another, so I replied with the following:
Senator,
Thanks for your invitation to chat during normal working hours on 4/7/09.
Unfortunately, although I’ve been out of work for three months, darn the luck, I am starting a new job on 4/6/09… I’m tempted to request a later start date so that I can attend your ‘Kitchen Table Talk’ in order to try and explain to you what most American’s do during their ‘Kitchen Table Talk’s. Typically, we sit down, usually without much of a sense of ‘excitement’, and try to figure out how much money we actually have, how much money is actually coming in, and then begin budgeting (that usually means cutting back on things we’d like to have and do) in order to try to make ends meet.
Perhaps you could pass that strategy on to your fellow’s?
I also wonder that you seem to invariably schedule these quaint get-togethers when most people, who are fortunate enough to have a job, will actually be at their jobs – I wonder if that is the point?
Here’s an idea, if you happen to be in town on April 15th (a day that figures big in our budgeting), maybe you’d like to drop by for a get-together and some Tea, which a few thousand of us are planning… I’m sure you’ll hear loads about what Missourians think of your ‘many exciting opportunities’.
Sincerely,
Van
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